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ESSAYS 


IN 


LITERARY    INTERPRETATION 


WORKS   BY   MR.  MABIE. 


MY    STUDY   FIRE. 

MY    STUDY   FIRE,  Second  Series. 

UNDER  THE  TREES  AND  ELSE- 
WHERE. 

SHORT   STUDIES   IN    LITERATURE. 

ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRE- 
TATION. 


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http://www.archive.org/details/essaysinliteraryOOmabiiala 


a-r 


Jobn  Keats. 


OCT 


ESSAYS   IN   LITERARY 

INTERPRETATION  BY 
HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE 


NEW  YORK  :  PUBLISHED  BY 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
MDCCCXCIII 


J 


1 


i 


Copyright,  1892  and  1893,     \$      "J 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company/X 

4 


Ail  rights  reserved. 


SKntbtrsttg  JJtesss: 

John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


2To  mg  Classmates  antj  iFrientrs, 

G.    STANLEY    HALL 

AND 

FRANCIS  LYNDE  STETSON. 


INTRODUCTORY    NOTE. 


Three  of  the  essays  included  in  this  volume  were 
contributed  to  the  "  Andover  Review,"  and  are  repub- 
lished by  the  courtesy  of  its  editors.  Personality  in 
Literary  Work  and  the  Significance  of  the  Modern 
Critical  Movement  in  Literature  were  very  briefly 
presented  in  "Short  Studies  in  Literature."  They 
are  here  discussed  at  much  greater  length  and  with 
fuller  illustration. 

August,  1892. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

Some  Aspects  of  Modern  Literature  ...  i 

Personality  in  Literary  Work 20 

The  Significance  of  Modern  Criticism    .    .  46 

The  Poetry  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti      .  71 

Robert  Browning 99 

John  Keats:  Poet  and  Man 138 

Some  Modern  Readings  from  Dante    .     .     .  175 

A  Word  about  Humour 206 


ESSAYS 


IN 


LITERARY    INTERPRETATION. 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE. 

Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  in  a  recent  article  on  the 
Greek  Anthology,  reminds  us  that  in  many  of  these 
fragments  of  a  rich  and  varied  literature  we  come 
upon  lines  full  of  the  modern  spirit.  The  large 
objective  manner  of  the  earlier  poets  has  given  place 
to  an  introspective  mood  significant  of  a  deepening 
self-consciousness,  and  the  remote  epic  themes  have 
been  succeeded  by  subjects  more  intimate  and  per- 
sonal. It  is  true  that  no  period  of  literature  is  wholly 
destitute  of  glimpses  into  familiar  life,  of  disclosures 
of  personal  experience ;  but  when  the  epic  and  the 
drama  are  in  the  ascendant,  these  are  incidental  and 
subordinate.  The  great  emotions  and  convictions  are 
presented  in  types  and  symbols;  multitudes  of  persons 
are  represented  by  colossal  figures,  the  range  and 
compass  of  whose  lives  create  an  impression  of 
universality.  The  pyramids  are  race  monuments; 
they  have  preserved  no  record  of  the  individual  hard- 


2         ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

ship  and  sacrifice  involved  in  their  construction.  In 
like  manner  the  Book  of  Job,  "  Prometheus  Bound," 
"  CEdipus  Tyrannus,"  and  the  "  Cid  "  perpetuate  ages 
of  personal  experience  and  achievement  in  com- 
manding types  of  human  nature.  The  personal  ele- 
ment is  the  very  substance  of  which  these  typical  men 
and  women  are  formed ;  but  art  has  discarded  that 
which  was  individual,  in  its  instinctive  search  for 
those  qualities  which  are  of  universal  moment  and 
significance.  The  personal  element  enters  as  sub- 
stance, but  not  as  form,  in  the  earlier  literatures ; 
the  individual  is  of  value  only  as  he  contributes  to 
those  ideal  conceptions  which  live  and  act  in  epic 
remoteness  from  common  life.  The  mountains  are 
of  the  same  substance  as  the  plain;  but  on  their 
summits  the  shepherd's  pipe  is  not  heard,  nor  are 
the  sheep  housed  there. 

We  note  here  one  of  the  most  striking  differences 
between  the  literature  of  comparatively  modern 
origin  and  that  of  earlier  periods.  The  books  of 
this  century,  contrasted  with  those  of  preceding 
centuries,  present  a  greatly  increased  complexity  of 
motives,  moods,  themes,  situations.  Probably  not 
one  phase  of  experience  of  any  significance  has 
escaped  record  at  the  hands  of  poet,  novelist, 
essayist,  or  critic.  Never  before  has  there  been 
such  a  universal  confession  of  sins  to  a  confessor 
devoid  of  any  power  of  absolution;  never  before 
such  a  complete  and  outspoken  revelation  of  the 
things  which  belong  to  our  most  secret  lives.     The 


SOME  ASPECTS  OP  MODERN  LITERATURE,      3 

old  declaration  that  there  is  nothing  hidden  which 
shall  not  be  revealed  is  already  fulfilled  in  our  hear- 
ing. Those  of  us  who  read  books  must  be  slow  of 
mind  and  of  heart  if  we  have  missed  a  real  and 
vital  knowledge  of  the  age  in  which,  and  the  men 
among  whom,  we  live.  An  impartial  spirit  of  revela- 
tion presides  over  the  world  of  our  time  and  uncovers 
the  unclean  and  the  loathsome  as  persistently  as  the 
pure  and  the  good.  The  selective  principle  of  the 
older  art  has  given  place  to  a  profound  passion  for 
knowledge  of  life ;  we  are  determined  to  know  what 
is  in  man  at  all  risks  to  our  tastes  and  our  conven- 
tional standards.  The  process  is  disagreeable,  but 
the  fact  is  significant ;  and  we  shall  make  a  great  mis- 
take if  in  our  detestation  of  the  methods  of  some 
contemporary  writers  we  refuse  to  see  the  meaning 
of  their  appearance  and  activity. 

Literature  is  so  closely  related  to  the  whole  move- 
ment of  life  that  every  decided  tendency  which  it 
discloses,  every  dominant  impulse  which  it  reveals, 
may  be  studied  with  the  certainty  that  some  fact  of 
human  experience,  some  energy  of  human  purpose 
and  desire,  lies  behind.  The  reflection  of  moving 
stars  and  overhanging  trees  in  the  depths  of  still 
waters  is  not  more  perfect  than  the  reproduction  of 
the  thoughts  and  aims  and  passions  of  a  generation 
in  the  books  it  writes  and  reads.  This  conception 
of  the  indissoluble  union  of  literature  and  life  is  no 
longer  novel  and  startling  to  us ;  but  we  have  so 
recently  come  to  understand  it  that  we  have  not  yet 


4         ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

fully  grasped  all  there  is  in  it  of  suggestive  and  fruit- 
ful truth.  Not  until  we  have  finally  and  forever 
abandoned  the  old  conception  of  literature  as  an  art 
conformed  to  certain  fixed  and  final  standards  shall 
we  learn  the  deepest  things  which  books  have  to 
teach  us.  So  long  as  we  conceive  of  literature  as  an 
art  whose  limitations  and  methods  have  been  estab- 
lished for  all  time,  we  shall  have  small  comprehen- 
sion of  modern  literature,  very  imperfect  sympathy 
with  it,  and  a  very  inadequate  conception  of  its  mean- 
ing and  its  tendency. 

Compared  with  the  literature  of  earlier  periods, 
modern  books,  as  has  been  said,  show  distinctly  and 
obviously  an  immensely  increased  complexity  of  form 
and  spirit;  the  passion  for  truth  and  for  expression 
has  become  so  general  and  so  powerful  that  it  has 
burst  many  ancient  channels  and  made  countless  new 
courses  for  itself.  Literature  to-day  tells  the  whole 
truth  so  far  as  it  knows  it ;  formerly  it  told  only  such 
truths  as  were  consistent  with  certain  theories  of  art. 
If  a  modern  artist  were  to  paint  the  parting  of  Aga- 
memnon and  Iphigenia,  he  would  tell  the  whole  story 
in  the  agony  of  the  father's  face ;  the  Greek  artist, 
on  the  other  hand,  veiled  the  father's  anguish  in  order 
that  the  high  tranquillity  of  art  might  not  be  disturbed. 
When  Agamemnon  was  murdered,  or  GEdipus  with 
his  own  hand  put  out  his  eyes  that  they  might  not  be 
the  unwilling  witnesses  of  his  doom,  the  theatre  knew 
only  by  report  that  these  events  had  taken  place ; 
to-day  the   whole  direful   course  of  the  tragedy  is 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.      5 

wrought  out  in  full  view  of  the  spectators.  It  may  be 
urged  that  this  removal  of  the  old  limits  of  proper 
representation  in  art  marks  a  decadence  of  the  art 
spirit,  a  loss  of  the  instinct  which  set  impalpable 
bounds  to  the  work  of  the  imagination.  But  it  is 
evident  that  this  expansion  of  the  scope  of  artistic 
representation  has  not  been  consciously  brought  about 
by  men  who  have  worked  to  a  common  end  and  be- 
queathed to  their  intellectual  successors  a  tradition  of 
iconoclasm.  The  change  has  come  so  slowly  and  so 
inevitably  that  it  must  be  recognized  as  a  universal 
movement,  —  the  working  out  of  impulses  and  instincts 
which  are  a  part  of  universal  human  nature,  and, 
therefore,  normal  and  necessary.  Great  literary  move- 
ments are  never  consciously  directed ;  they  are  always 
the  expression  through  art  of  some  fresh  energy  of 
conviction,  some  new  and  large  hope  and  passion 
of  a  race  or  an  epoch.  The  general  development  of 
literature  is,  therefore,  in  its  main  directions  inevi- 
table and  beneficent ;  if  it  were  not  so,  progress  would 
be  a  blunder  and  life  a  stagnant  pool  rather  than  a 
running  stream. 

While  there  have  been  periods  of  decadence,  we 
must  assume  that  the  unfolding  of  the  literary  power 
and  faculty  has  been  progressive,  and  has  taken 
place  under  laws  whose  operation  has  been  above 
and  beyond  human  control.  Men  have  spoken 
through  all  the  forms  of  art  thoughts  of  whose 
origin  and  final  outcome  they  have  known  as  little 
as  one  knows  of  the  ports  from  which  and  to  which 


6         ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  vessels  sail  as  they  come  and  go  against  the  blue 
of  the  offing.  The  expansion  of  the  field  of  litera- 
ture has  not  been  a  matter  of  choice ;  it  has  been 
a  matter  of  necessity,  and  our  chief  concern  is  to 
accept  it  as  a  revelation  of  the  general  order  under 
which  we  live,  and  to  seek  to  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  it.  Students  of  literature  know  that  when  they 
come  upon  a  period  of  large  and  fruitful  activity,  they 
will  find  the  literary  movement  contemporaneous 
with  some  widespread  and  vital  movement  of  thought, 
some  profound  stirring  of  the  depths  of  popular  life. 
Without  the  unusual  enrichment  of  soil,  the  sudden 
and  affluent  fertility  never  takes  place.  If  the  Eng- 
lish people  had  not  been  charged  with  an  outpouring 
of  national  spirit  strong  enough  to  invigorate  English 
life  from  the  Strand  to  the  Spanish  Main,  the  great 
drama  of  Shakespeare  and  his  fellow-craftsmen  would 
not  have  been  written.  If  literature  has  been  vastly 
extended,  it  has  been  because  the  literary  impulse 
has  made  itself  more  generally  felt.  Formerly  a  few 
men  and  women  wrote  the  books  of  the  world.  They 
were  the  voices  of  a  silent  world ;  as  we  listen,  we 
seem  at  first  to  hear  no  other  words  but  theirs.  We 
might  hastily  conclude  that  there  were  no  thoughts  in 
those  old  times  but  those  that  come  to  us  from  a  few 
lips,  musical  with  an  eloquence  which  charms  time 
itself  into  silence  and  memory.  These  great  souls 
must  surely  have  been  of  other  substance  than  the 
countless  multitudes  who  died  and  gave  no  sound ; 
remote  from  the  lost  and  forgotten  civilizations  which 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.      7 

surrounded  them,  they  breathed  a  larger  air  and 
moved  with  the  gods.  But  as  we  listen  more  in- 
tently and  patiently,  these  puissant  tones  seem  to 
issue  from  a  world-wide  inarticulate  murmur;  they 
are  no  longer  solitary ;  they  interpret  that  which  lies 
unspoken  in  countless  hearts.  How  solitary  Job  sits 
among  his  griefs  as  we  look  back  upon  him  !  All 
the  races  who  dwelt  about  him  have  vanished;  the 
world  of  activity  and  thought  in  which  he  lived  has 
perished  utterly ;  but  there  stands  the  immortal 
singer  with  that  marvellous  song,  —  "  sublime  sorrow, 
sublime  reconciliation ;  oldest  choral  melody  as  of 
the  heart  of  mankind ;  so  soft  and  great ;  as  the 
summer  midnight,  as  the  world  with  its  seas  and 
stars."  But  this  sublime  argument,  which  moves  on 
with  such  a  sweep  of  wing,  is  not  the  thought  of  Job 
alone ;  it  is  the  groping,  doubting  aspiration  of  the 
East  finding  voice  and  measure  for  itself;  it  is  the 
movement  of  the  mind  of  a  people  through  its  long 
search  for  truth ;  it  is  the  spiritual  history  of  a  race. 
The  lonely  thinker,  under  those  clear  Eastern  skies, 
made  himself  the  interpreter  of  the  world  which  he 
alone  has  survived.  Back  of  the  great  poem  there 
is  an  unwritten  history  greater  and  more  pathetic 
than  the  poem  itself,  could  we  but  uncover  it. 

Great  books  are  born  not  in  the  intellect,  but  in 
experience,  —  in  the  contact  of  mind  and  heart  with 
the  great  and  terrible  facts  of  life  ;  the  great  concep- 
tions of  literature  originate  not  in  the  individual  mind, 
but  in  the  soil  of  common  human  hopes,  loves,  fears, 


8         ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

aspirations,  sufferings.  Shakespeare  did  not  invent 
Hamlet;  he  found  him  in  human  histories  already 
acted  out  to  the  tragic  end.  Goethe  did  not  create 
Faust  j  he  summoned  him  out  of  the  dim  mediaeval 
world,  brought  him  face  to  face  with  the  crucial  ex- 
periences of  life,  and  so  fashioned  a  character  and 
a  career  which  have  become  typical.  "  It  takes  a 
great  deal  of  life,"  said  Alfred  de  Musset,  "  to  make 
a  little  art."  The  more  deeply  we  study  great  books 
the  more  clear  it  becomes  that  literature  is  not  pri- 
marily an  art  born  of  skill  and  training,  but  the  ex- 
pression of  man's  growth  into  comprehension  of  his 
own  life  and  of  the  sublime  order  of  which  he  is  part. 
Life  itself  is  the  final  fact  for  which  all  men  of  genu- 
ine gift  and  insight  are  searching ;  and  the  great  books 
are  either  representations  or  interpretations  of  this 
all-embracing  fact.  There  are  wide  differences  of 
original  endowment,  of  temperament,  of  training,  of 
environment.  There  are  broad  contrasts  of  spirit, 
method,  treatment ;  but  a  common  impulse  underlies 
all  great  works  of  literary  genius.  When  Byron,  with 
a  few  daring  strokes,  draws  the  portrait  of  Manfred, 
when  Wordsworth  meditates  among  the  Cumberland 
Hills,  each  in  his  way  draws  near  to  life,  —  the  one 
to  picture  and  the  other  to  interpret  it.  No  rapt  and 
lonely  vision  lifts  them  to  heights  inaccessible  to 
common  thought  and  need;  their  gift  of  insight, 
while  it  separates  them  from  their  fellows  as  individ- 
uals, unites  them  the  more  closely  with  humanity. 
For  the  essential  greatness  of  men  of  genius  does  not 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.       9 

lie  in  their  separation  from  their  fellows,  nor  in  any 
moods  which  are  peculiarly  their  own,  but  in  that 
inexplicable  union  of  heart  and  mind  which  makes 
them  sharers  of  the  private  life  of  the  world,  discern- 
ers  of  that  which  is  hidden  in  individual  experience, 
interpreters  of  men  to  themselves  and  to  each  other. 

The  great  mass  of  men  arrive  late  at  complete 
self-consciousness,  at  a  full  knowledge  of  themselves. 
The  earlier  generations  attained  this  self-knowledge 
for  the  most  part  very  imperfectly;  it  was  the  pos- 
session of  a  few,  and  these  elect  souls  spoke  for 
the  uncounted  hosts  of  their  silent  contemporaries. 
When  any  considerable  number  of  individuals  of  the 
same  race  secured  this  complete  possession  of  them- 
selves, there  was  a  wide  and  adequate  expression  of 
life  as  they  saw  it.  By  virtue  of  natural  aptitude,  of 
exceptional  opportunity  for  knowing  what  is  in  life, 
and  of  a  training  of  a  very  high  and  complete  kind, 
the  Greeks  attained  a  degree  of  self-knowledge  which 
was  far  in  advance  of  the  attainment  of  most  of  the 
Oriental  races.  This  mastery  of  life  and  its  arts  was 
disclosed  chiefly  in  one  city,  and  within  a  single  cen- 
tury that  city  enriched  literature  for  all  time  by  a 
series  of  masterpieces.  If  there  had  been  elsewhere 
the  same  degree  of  self-knowledge,  there  would  have 
been  a  corresponding  impulse  toward  expression. 
But  except  among  the  Hebrews,  there  was  not;  for 
the  most  part  the  races  in  the  East  contemporaneous 
with  the  Greeks  did  not  attain  anything  more  than  a 
very  inadequate  conception  of  themselves  and  their 


IO       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

relation  to  the  world.  Among  the  Hindoos  there  was, 
it  is  true,  a  very  considerable  and  a  very  noble  liter- 
ary development ;  but  this  movement  for  expression 
was  partial  and  inadequate  because  the  knowledge 
that  inspired  it  was  partial  and  inadequate.  The 
Hindoos  entangled  God  in  the  shining  meshes  of  his 
own  creation;  they  never  clearly  separated  him  in 
thought  from  Nature,  and  they  never  perfectly  real- 
ized their  own  individuality.  The  great  Western 
races,  on  the  other  hand,  were  so  absorbed  in  the 
vast  activities  of  growth  and  empire  that  they  had 
small  inclination  to  study  themselves;  the  Romans 
conquered  the  world,  but  when  it  lay  within  their 
grasp,  they  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  it,  so  in- 
adequate was  their  knowledge  of  themselves  and  of 
the  real  nature  of  their  possessions.  The  literature 
of  such  a  people  will  rarely  reveal  any  original  im- 
pulse or  force ;  it  will  not  even  express  the  con- 
sciousness of  power,  which  is  more  clearly  realized 
than  anything  else  by  such  a  people ;  it  will  be  an 
imitative  art,  whose  chief  attraction  will  lie  in  the 
natural  or  acquired  skill  of  individuals,  and  whose 
chief  use  will  be  to  register  great  deeds,  not  to  ex- 
press and  illustrate  great  souls  and  a  great  common 
life.  The  Northern  races,  whose  various  stages  of 
growth  were  to  be  recorded  in  noble  literary  forms, 
were  still  in  the  period  of  childhood,  and  knew 
neither  their  own  strength  nor  the  weakness  of  the 
older  civilization  which  surrounded  them. 

During  periods  of  imperfect  self-knowledge  there 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.     II 

will  be  necessarily  fewer  thoughts,  convictions,  or 
emotions  to  inspire  expression;  and  these  will  be 
clearly  felt  and  adequately  uttered  by  a  few  persons. 
The  simplicity  of  life  in  such  periods  makes  a  very 
massive  and  noble  art  possible ;  such  an  art  as  the 
Greeks  created  as  a  revelation  of  their  own  nature 
and  an  expression  of  their  thought  about  themselves 
and  the  world.  The  limitations  of  such  an  art  give 
it  definiteness,  clearness  of  outline,  large  repose  and 
harmony.  And  these  limitations  are  not  imposed  as 
a  matter  of  artifice;  they  are  in  large  measure  un- 
conscious, and  they  are,  therefore,  inevitable.  To  im- 
pose the  standards  and  boundaries  of  the  art  of  such 
a  period  upon  the  art  of  later  and  immensely  ex- 
panded periods  would  be  as  irrational  as  to  impose 
on  the  America  of  to-day  the  methods  of  the  America 
of  the  colonial  period. 

As  self-knowledge  becomes  the  possession  of  a 
larger  number  of  persons,  becomes  general  rather  than 
individual,  the  faculty  of  expression  is  correspondingly 
developed  until  the  gift  and  office  of  the  fortunate 
few  become  almost  public  functions.  Apollo's  lyre 
still  yields  its  supreme  melodies  to  the  greatest  souls 
only,  but  a  host  have  learned  to  set  their  thought  to 
its  lighter  strains.  Now,  it  is  precisely  this  general 
development  of  self-knowledge  which  characterizes  our 
modern  life  and  reveals  itself  in  our  varied  and  im- 
mensely diversified  literature.  Humanity  has  come  to 
a  large  measure  of  maturity.  It  has  had  a  long  his- 
tory, which  has  been  the  record  of  its  efforts  to  know 


12       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

its  own  nature  and  to  master  the  field  and  the  imple- 
ments of  its  activity.  It  has  made  countless  experi- 
ments, and  has  learned  quite  as  much  from  its  failures 
as  from  its  successes.  It  has  laboriously  traversed 
the  island  in  space  where  its  fortunes  are  cast ;  it  has 
listened  intently,  generation  after  generation,  for  some 
message  from  beyond  the  seas  which  encompass  it. 
It  has  made  every  kind  of  venture  to  enlarge  its  capi- 
tal of  pleasure,  and  it  has  hazarded  all  its  gains  for 
some  nobler  fortune  of  which  it  has  dreamed.  It  has 
opened  its  arms  to  receive  the  joys  of  life,  and  missing 
them,  has  patiently  clasped  a  crucifix.  It  has  drank 
every  cup  of  experience ;  won  all  victories  and  suf- 
fered all  defeats ;  tested  all  creeds  and  acted  all  phi- 
losophies ;  illustrated  all  baseness  and  risen  to  the 
heights  of  all  nobleness.  In  short,  humanity  has  lived, 
—  not  in  a  few  persons,  a  few  periods,  a  few  activities, 
but  in  countless  persons,  through  long  centuries,  and 
under  all  conditions.  Surely  some  larger  and  more 
comprehensive  idea  of  life  lies  in  the  mind  of  the 
modern  world  than  ever  defined  itself  to  the  men  of 
the  earlier  times.  Society  has  still  much  to  learn; 
but  men  have  now  lived  long  enough  to  have  attained 
a  fairly  complete  self-knowledge.  They  have  by  no 
means  fully  developed  themselves,  but  they  know 
what  is  in  them.  Humanity  has  come  to  maturity, 
and  to  the  self-consciousness  which  is  the  power  of 
maturity. 

With  this  self-consciousness  there  has  come  a  cor- 
responding power  of  expression;  the  two  are  as  in- 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.     1 3 

separable  as  the  genius  of  the  composer  and  the  musir 
through  which  it  reveals  itself,  as  the  impulse  of  the 
sculptor  and  the  carven  stone  in  which  it  stands  ex- 
pressed. Thought  and  expression  are  parts  of  one 
complete  act.  As  conceptions  of  life  multiply  and 
widen,  language  is  unconsciously  expanded  and  en- 
riched to  receive  and  convey  them ;  as  experience 
deepens,  speech  matches  it  with  profounder  and 
subtiler  phrase.  With  the  power  to  communicate  that 
which  is  essentially  novel  comes  also  the  impulse. 
Expression  is  the  habit  and  the  law  of  civilized  life. 
There  is  within  us  an  instinctive  recognition  of  the 
universal  quality  of  thought  and  experience ;  we  feel 
that  neither  can  be  in  any  sense  our  private  posses- 
sion. They  belong  to  the  world,  and  even  when  we 
endeavour  to  keep  them  to  ourselves  they  seem  to 
elude  and  escape  us.  No  sooner  does  one  utter  a 
thought  that  was  new  to  him  than  a  hundred  other 
men  claim  a  common  ownership  with  him.  It  was,  as 
we  say,  in  the  air,  and  he  had  unconsciously  appro- 
priated that  which  was  public  property.  There  is  a 
large  and  noble  consistency  behind  our  fragmentary 
thinking  which  makes  us  aware  of  some  great  order  of 
things  with  which  we  are  unconsciously  working.  Our 
lesser  thought  is  always  seen  in  the  end  to  be  part  of 
a  larger  thought.  The  investigator,  working  along  one 
line  of  scientific  research,  finds  his  latest  discovery 
of  that  which  seemed  the  special  law  of  his  depart- 
ment matched  by  the  discovery  of  the  same  law  oper- 
ating  in  an   entirely  different  field.     Men   of  large 


14      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

vision  know  that  the  same  general  tendencies  are  dis- 
coverable at  almost  any  given  time  in  science,  art, 
philosophy,  literature,  and  theology.  The  significance 
of  these  common  tendencies  is  deepened  by  the  fact 
that  for  the  most  part  the  individual  workers  in  the 
different  fields  are  unconscious  of  them.  They  are  all 
unwitting  witnesses  to  a  higher  and  more  comprehen- 
sive truth  than  that  which  each  is  bent  upon  demon- 
strating. There  is,  in  other  words,  a  continuous 
revelation  of  ultimate  things  through  the  totality  of 
human  activity  and  experience ;  and  this  revelation, 
which  is  co-extensive  with  universal  life,  presses  upon 
men  for  expression.  Whether  they  will  or  not,  it 
must  utter  itself;  behind  all  life  it  sets  its  mighty  im- 
pulse, and  nothing  can  resist  it.  With  the  immense 
expansion  of  modern  life  it  was  inevitable  that  there 
should  be  an  immense  expansion  of  literature ;  that 
new  literary  forms  like  the  novel  should  be  developed ; 
that  facts  hitherto  suppressed  or  unobserved  should 
be  brought  to  light ;  and  that  phases  and  aspects  of 
experience  hitherto  unrecorded  should  suddenly  en- 
shrine themselves  in  art. 

The  broadening  of  the  literary  impulse,  the  impulse 
of  expression,  has  materially  changed  the  prevailing 
character  of  literature  and  indefinitely  multiplied  its 
forms.  Instead  of  commanding  types,  massive  be- 
cause isolated,  there  has  succeeded  a  vast  variety  of 
more  specialized  types,  in  which  the  great  truths  of 
experience,  instead  of  being  generalized  into  a  few 
personalities,  are  dispersed  through  many.     Literature 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.     15 

no  longer  reveals  only  the  summits  of  thought  and 
action ;  it  displays  the  whole  landscape  of  life, —  con- 
tinent and  sea,  barren  wilderness  and  blossoming  field, 
lonely  valley  and  shining  peak.  Personality  is  no 
longer  sublimated  in  order  to  present  its  universal 
elements ;  it  is  depicted  in  its  most  familiar  and  inti- 
mate forms.  In  art  Raphael's  Madonnas  and  Michael 
Angelo's  colossal  figures  have  been  succeeded  by 
Bastien-Lepage's  Jean  d'Arc  and  Millet's  Angelus,  — 
not  because  the  religious  feeling  is  less  penetrating 
and  profound,  but  because  it  recognizes  in  nearer  and 
more  familiar  forms  the  sanctity  and  dignity  it  once 
saw  only  in  things  most  beautiful  and  august.  Under 
the  same  impulse  the  literary  instinct  seeks  to  dis- 
cover what  is  significant  in  the  life  that  is  nearest, 
convinced  that  all  life  is  a  revelation,  and  that  to  the 
artist  beauty  is  universally  diffused  through  all  created 
things.  As  the  wayside  flower,  once  neglected,  dis- 
closes a  loveliness  all  its  own,  so  does  the  human 
thought,  emotion,  experience,  once  passed  by  in  the 
pursuit  of  some  remoter  theme.  Literature,  which 
holds  so  vital  a  relation  to  the  inner  life  of  men, 
shows  in  this  more  catholic  and  sympathetic  selection 
of  characters  and  scenes  the  new  and  deeper  concep- 
tion of  human  relationship  which  is  now  the  most 
potent  factor  in  the  social  life  of  the  world. 

One  looks  in  vain  through  the  earlier  literatures  for 
such  frank  disclosures  of  personal  feeling  and  habit, 
such  unveiling  of  self,  as  are  found  in  Montaigne, 
Cellini,  Rousseau,  and  Amiel.     But  these  direct  and 


1 6      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

explicit  confessions  are  hardly  more  personal  and 
individual  than  the  great  mass  of  modem  literature. 
We  know  the  secret  thoughts,  the  hidden  processes 
of  character,  in  Tito  and  Anna  Kar^nina,  even  more 
completely  than  if  these  creations,  become  actual 
flesh  and  blood,  had  attempted  to  give  us  their  con- 
fidence. The  great  writers  who  have  drawn  these 
masterly  portraits  have  comprehended  the  significance 
of  the  almost  imperceptible  stages  by  which  motives 
and  impulses  are  moved  forward  to  their  ultimate 
issue  in  action,  by  which  character  is  advanced  from 
its  plastic  to  its  final  and  permanent  form.  They 
have  seen  that  dramatic  interest  does  not  attach 
exclusively  to  those  well-defined  climaxes  of  experi- 
ence which  we  call  crises,  but  invests  and  gives  artistic 
value  to  the  whole  movement  of  life ;  that  no  acts 
which  have  moral  or  intellectual  quality  are  unimpor- 
tant. The  peasant  is  quite  as  interesting  a  figure  to 
the  literary  artist  as  the  king ;  has  become,  in  fact, 
far  more  attractive  and  suggestive,  since  nothing  in- 
tervenes between  him  and  human  nature  in  its  purest 
form.  Interest  in  the  great  fact  of  life  has  become  so 
intense  that  we  are  impatient  of  all  the  conventions 
and  traditions  that  conceal  it  from  us.  The  novels 
to-day  are  full  of  studies  of  men  and  women  in  the 
most  primitive  conditions  and  relations,  and  he  must 
command  the  very  highest  resources  of  his  art  who 
would  interest  us  in  a  character  swathed  in  the  trap- 
pings of  royalty.  These  things  seem  tawdry  and 
UDreal  to  a  generation  that  has  caught  a  glimpse  of 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  MODERN  LITERATURE.     17 

the  awful  meaning  of  life  as  it  works  out  its  purpose 
in  every  individual  soul.  If  Shakespeare  were  living 
to-day,  his  Lear  might  not  be  an  uncrowned  king,  but 
the  kinsman  of  that  lonely,  massive  peasant-figure 
whose  essential  and  tragic  dignity  Tourguenieff  has 
made  so  impressive  in  "The  Lear  of  the  Steppes." 
Genius  is  the  highest  form  of  sympathy ;  and  in  mod- 
ern literature  this  quality  has  made  it  the  interpreter 
of  the  complete  experience  of  humanity.  It  has  been 
irresistibly  drawn  to  that  which  is  lowly  and  obscure 
because  it  has  discerned  in  these  untrodden  paths  a 
beauty  and  a  meaning  essentially  new  to  men ;  it  has 
become  conscious  of  the  pathetic  contrast  between 
souls  encompassed  with  limitations  and  the  eternal 
elements  of  which  they  are  compounded. 

They  must  be  blind  indeed  who  fail  to  discover  in 
this  attitude  of  literature  toward  men  and  women  as 
individuals  a  change  of  thought  as  vital  as  any  that 
ever  has  taken  place  in  history.  The  commonest  life 
is  touched  and  irradiated  by  this  spirit  of  insight, 
and  in  the  lowliest  as  in  the  most  impressive  person 
and  fact,  an  inexhaustible  significance  is  discovered. 
Literature  has  come  close  to  life  not  only  in  its  great 
historic  manifestations,  but  in  its  most  familiar  and 
homely  aspects,  and  it  lends  itself  with  impartial 
sympathy  to  the  portrayal  and  interpretation  of  both. 
The  phrase  whose  novel  appeal  to  a  common  humanity 
once  brought  out  the  applause  of  the  Roman  theatre 
is  to-day  written  as  a  supreme  law  across  all  our  arts. 
Nothing  that  is  human   is   insignificant   or  without 


l8      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

interest  for  us.  Our  common  search  is  not  for  theo- 
ries of  life,  —  they  are  all  being  cast  aside  because 
they  are  all  inadequate,  —  but  for  the  facts  of  life. 
There  is  coming  at  last  the  dawn  of  a  great  and 
worthy  thought  of  this  life  of  ours,  and  the  universe  in 
which  it  is  set ;  and  as  this  thought  clears  itself  from 
imperfect  knowledge  and  from  ancient  ignorance,  a 
new  reverence  for  the  humblest  human  soul  is  born 
within  us.  The  expansion  of  man's  conception  of 
the  universe  from  the  time  of  Ptolemy  to  that  of 
Tyndall  has  not  been  greater  than  the  expansion  of 
the  conception  of  the  meaning  of  life  from  the  thought 
of  the  first  or  the  thirteenth  century  to  that  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  One  result  of  this  vaster  con- 
ception of  life  is  the  recognition  of  its  supremacy  over 
the  arts.  They  were  once  ends  in  themselves ;  they 
are  now  means  of  expression.  They  were  once  su- 
preme and  final  achievements ;  they  are  now  records 
and  registers  of  that  which  is  greater  than  they. 

Art  is  the  necessary  and  universal  quality  of  litera- 
ture ;  it  is  the  presence  or  absence  of  this  quality 
which  elects  some  books  for  long  life  and  others  for 
the  life  of  a  day.  It  is  the  impalpable  and  subtile 
touch  of  art  which  confers  on  a  book,  a  picture,  or  a 
statue  that  longevity  which  we  rashly  call  immortality. 
But  as  books  accumulate,  and  as  the  years  multiply 
into  centuries  and  the  centuries  lengthen  into  epochs, 
we  become  conscious  of  the  impotence  of  art  itself 
to  elude  the  action  of  that  change  from  a  lower  to 
a  higher  form  which  we  call   death.     There  are  no 


SOME  ASPECTS  OP  MODERN  LITERATURE.     19 

finalities  of  expression ;  life  has  always  a  new  word  to 
utter,  a  new  form  to  fashion.  The  greatest  cannot 
hope  to  measure  the  complete  span  of  a  single  age, 
much  less  the  span  of  all  history.  We  shall  not  think 
less  of  our  arts,  but  we  are  coming  to  have  a  new 
thought  about  them.  The  men  who  create  them  are 
greater  than  they ;  humanity  is  greater  than  the  sum 
of  all  its  achievements  and  expressions.  Art  must 
come  closer  to  us,  must  be  more  reverent  and  humble, 
must  be  our  servant  and  not  master.  Literature  is 
already  full  of  the  signs  of  this  change.  It  has  suf- 
fered no  real  loss  in  the  evolution  through  which  it 
has  passed  from  a  few  simple  and  impressive  forms 
to  an  expression  at  once  more  flexible  and  of  vastly 
increased  volume.  If  the  great  chords  that  once 
vibrated  to  an  infrequent  hand  are  now  less  distinct 
and  commanding,  it  is  because  the  lyre  yields  its 
full  harmony  to  the  passionate  touch  of  life. 


PERSONALITY  IN   LITERARY  WORK. 

Dr.  Johnson  is  probably  the  best  English  illustration 
of  a  writer  whose  personality  was  so  inadequately  ex- 
pressed in  his  work  that  what  he  was  is  likely  to  obliterate 
what  he  did.  The  man  was  hearty,  simple,  often 
offensively,  always  unaffectedly,  forceful  and  down- 
right ;  his  work,  on  the  other  hand,  while  sound  and 
wholesome,  is  formal,  academic,  elaborate,  and  at 
times  highly  artificial.  No  man  spoke  with  more 
resolute  Saxon  bluntness  than  the  author  of  those 
solemn  and  imposing  essays  in  the  "  Rambler,"  of 
whom  Goldsmith  said  that  if  he  wrote  of  little  fishes 
they  would  all  speak  like  great  whales.  That  his 
pen  was  not  wholly  devoid  of  the  vigour  which  his 
speech  uniformly  had,  is  evident  to  every  one  who 
reads  his  letters ;  but  as  a  rule  this  rugged  strength 
is  diffused  and  lost  in  a  succession  of  well-wrought 
phrases  rather  than  concentrated  on  the  sharp  edge 
of  concise  and  telling  sentences.  It  is  certainly  no 
lack  of  personality  which  one  feels  in  reading  John- 
son ;  the  Doctor  is  never  far  off  in  those  infrequent 
moments  when  one  takes  up  "  Rasselas "  or  the 
"Rambler;  "  but  it  is  the  wigged  and  powdered  pro- 
fessional man  of  letters  in  the  wigged  and  powdered 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY   WORK.  21 

eighteenth  century,  not  the  big-brained,  big-hearted, 
irascible,  pathetic,  and  unaffectedly  human  hero  of  Bos- 
well's  immortal  biography.  In  the  whole  company 
of  English  writers  from  Chaucer  to  Carlyle  there  is 
no  more  sharply  defined  and  vigorous  personality; 
none  more  pronounced,  more  clearly  shown,  more 
easily  understood.  Evidently  the  failure  of  Johnson's 
work  to  impress  us  adequately  is  in  no  sense  due 
to  lack  of  individuality  behind  it;  the  fact  that  we 
are  transferring  our  interest  more  and  more  from  the 
work  to  the  man  shows  clearly  enough  that  the  man 
possessed  qualities  which  his  work  fails  to  convey. 
Johnson's  defect  as  a  writer  lay  in  his  inability  to 
make  his  voice  distinct;  it  does  not  ring  clear  in 
perfectly  natural  tones.  When  he  talked,  his  words 
were  charged  with  the  electric  current  of  his  tremen- 
dous personality;  when  he  wrote,  the  circuit  was 
broken ;  at  some  point  the  current  escaped  into  the 
air,  and  the  reader  never  receives  any  emotion  or 
impulse  approaching  a  shock  in  intensity.  It  is  prob- 
able that  the  only  saving  quality  in  Johnson's  work  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  it  helps  us  to  understand  him. 
In  most  cases  we  remember  the  man  because  of  the 
work  he  did ;  in  Johnson's  case  we  shall  remember 
the  work  because  of  the  man  who  did  it. 

Shakespeare,  on  the  other  hand,  furnishes  the  best 
English  illustration  of  a  writer  whose  personality  is 
completely  expressed  in  his  work.  The  work  we 
know  by  heart ;  of  the  man  we  know  almost  nothing 
in  the  sense  that  we  know  Dr.  Johnson.    So  slight 


22      ESS  A  YS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

and  fragmentary  is  our  knowledge  of  the  outward 
facts  of  Shakespeare's  life  that  this  noblest  of  modern 
minds  has  furnished  the  material  for  the  most  fantas- 
tic exercise  of  arbitrary  inference  known  in  the  history 
of  literature.     If  Shakespeare  had  had  his  Boswell, 
we  might  have  possessed  an  authoritative  history  of 
"  Hamlet  "  and  the  "Tempest,"  — something  which 
would  have  given  us  the  order  and  sequence  of  these 
marvellous  plays.     They  are  creations,  however,  not 
pieces  of  mechanism ;  and  nothing  deeper  could  be 
told  about  them  than  they  reveal  themselves.     About 
every  great  work  of  art  there  is  something  mysterious 
and  inexplicable ;  and  he  who  can  explain  it  least  is 
he  by  whose  hand  it  was  done.     Shakespeare's  spirit- 
ual  autobiography   lies  clearly  written   in  his  work, 
although  the  aspect  under  which  his  contemporaries 
knew  him  is  barely  hinted  at  there.     Shakespeare's 
Boswell  would  have  been  intensely  interesting;  we 
could  well  have  spared  libraries  of  commentaries  if 
his  single  volume  could  have  taken  their  place ;  but 
he  could  have  rendered  no  such  service  to  his  master 
or  to  us  as  Johnson's  Boswell  performed.     Johnson 
spoke  from  the   surface  of  his  nature  when  he  set 
hand  to  paper,  and  the  gleanings  of  Boswell  were 
more    than    the    harvester    gathered ;    Shakespeare 
spoke  from  the  depths  of  his  nature  and  in  all  the  tones 
which  impart   expression  to  uttered   speech,  and  a 
Boswell  would  have   found    little  unsaid   that  was 
needed  to  the  complete  expression  of  his  spiritual 
nature.     It  would  have  given  us  deep  satisfaction  to 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  23 

have  known  something  of  his  smile,  his  carriage,  his 
manner  of  speech  and  bearing  among  his  fellows; 
but  we  know  from  his  own  report  his  thought  of 
human  life,  encircled  by  mysteries,  swayed  by  the 
winds  of  passion,  calmed  by  the  weight  of  its  own 
destiny;  and  the  essential  thing  to  be  known  about 
any  man  is  his  thought  about  these  matters. 

These  two  writers  will  serve  to  illustrate  a  princi- 
ple which  becomes  clearer  the  more  thoroughly  and 
widely  we  apply  it  to  all  works  which  belong  distinc- 
tively to  literature :  the  principle  that  a  man's  work 
approaches  the  very  highest  standard  in  the  degree 
in  which  it  expresses  his  personality,  —  personality  in 
the  large  sense  which  includes  temperament,  quality 
of  imagination,  artistic  sense,  point  of  view,  education, 
and  faculty  of  expression.  The  word  is  often  used  to 
express  what  is  obvious  and  idiosyncratic  in  a  man's 
nature  or  history ;  and  literary  work  is  sometimes  said 
to  be  full  of  personality  when  it  is  stamped  with  this 
kind  of  individual  quality.  The  idea  of  personality 
implied  in  this  criticism  is  not  false,  but  it  is  inade- 
quate ;  and  it  becomes  misleading  when  it  is  applied 
as  a  test.  "  The  Sorrows  of  Werther,"  "  Obermann," 
and  Rousseau's  "  Confessions  "  are  charged  with  an 
intensity  of  mood  or  emotion  which  conveys  a  vivid 
impression  of  personality ;  but  the  real  Goethe  is  to 
be  sought  elsewhere  than  in  the  "Sorrows  of  Wer- 
ther," —  the  rounded  and  full  personality  of  the  man 
is  not  only  concealed,  but  misrepresented,  by  the  mo- 
mentary passion  which  burned  itself  out  in  that  work 


24     ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

of  his  youth.     These  intense  expressions  of  critical 
moments  in  a  man's  growth,  these  cries  out  of  the 
heart  of  a  passing  anguish,  are  indeed  charged  with 
personality,  but  with  a  personality  limited  in  time  and 
experience;  they  are  not  the  complete  and  harmo- 
nious expression  of  the  whole  man.     If  we  seek  this, 
we  shall  find  it  not  in  these  passionate  outcries,  but  in 
the  clear,  strong,  harmonic  tones   that   convey   the 
full   significance   of  deep,   rich,    masterful   life   and 
thought.     The  personality  of  Byron,  of  Leopardi,  of 
De  Musset,  is  so  obvious,  so  interesting,  so  pungent, 
that  their  work  and  the  work  of  men  of  their  class 
seem  like  the  truest  and  deepest  expression  of  the 
man  behind  it ;  its  intensity  makes  the  calmness  and 
range  of  the  greatest  writers   seem  entirely  imper- 
sonal.    When,  however,  we  study  these  larger  and 
more  varied  creations,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  pres- 
ence of  men  whose  restraint  and  repose  are  significant 
not  of  repression,  but  of  free,  complete,  and  beautiful 
self-expression.     It  is  in  Sophocles,  in  Shakespeare,  in 
Moliere,  in  Goethe,  that  we  find  the  ripest  and  most 
powerful  personalities,  —  personalities  that  have  not 
rested  in  simple  transcriptions  of  the  feeling  of  the 
moment,  but  have  made  their  own  experiences  illus- 
trative of  universal  law,  and  in  the  untroubled  surface 
of  their  calm,  deep  natures  have  reflected  the  whole 
moving  image  of  things.     "  Manfred,"  "  The  Rob- 
bers," and  "  Queen  Mab  "  are  not  defective  in  dis- 
closure of  personality ;  but  in  all  works  of  their  kind 
the  personality  is  either  limited  in  time  or  in  expe- 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITER  4RY  WORK.  2$ 

rience ;  it  is  a  personality  narrow  in  itself  or  imper- 
fectly expressed.  If  a  man  is  to  make  the  most  of 
his  materials,  he  must  have  that  mastery  of  them 
which  permits  him  to  transpose  and  combine  them  at 
will;  which  makes  them  pliant  and  flexible  in  his 
hand.  This  apt  and  varied  skill  eludes  those  who, 
by  the  limitation  of  their  own  natures  or  the  violence 
of  their  emotions,  are  driven  rather  than  inspired  by 
the  critical  moment  and  experience.  The  artist  is 
most  inspired  when  his  hand  is  freest  and  surest,  be- 
cause intensity  and  agitation  of  emotion  have  passed 
on  into  depth  and  clearness  of  vision. 

Personality  in  the  larger  sense  is  to  be  found  not 
in  what  is  strongly  individualistic  in  temper  and 
expression,  but  in  what  is  distinctive  and  characteristic 
in  a  man's  view  of  life  and  art,  —  in  his  structural 
force  and  genius ;  in  the  quality  and  direction  of  his 
insight ;  in  the  adequacy  and  inevitableness  of  his 
expression.  At  the  very  bottom  of  a  man's  work  lies 
his  thought  of  life,  —  his  idea  of  the  materials  which 
are  at  hand  and  of  the  use  he  can  make  of  them ; 
and  this  thought  contains  the  very  essence  of  that 
which  makes  the  man  different  from  all  other  men 
who  have  been  or  shall  be.  For  this  thought 
embodies  everything  that  is  peculiar  and  distinctive 
to  him.  The  thought  of  a  mature  man  about  life  and 
art  is  the  adjustment  of  the  man's  self  to  the  world 
which  he  finds  about  him;  when  he  has  reached  a 
conception  of  the  significance  of  life  and  the  uses  of 
art,  he  has  determined  that  which  is  most  fundamental 


26      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

for  himself  and  most  deeply  and  permanently  de- 
finitive of  his  character  and  genius.  The  concep- 
tion may  be  primarily  moral,  philosophic,  artistic ;  it 
may  involve  clear  insight  into  the  lines  of  right, 
of  thought,  or  of  beauty  along  which  the  universe  is 
built ;  whatever  it  is,  it  determines  the  genius  of  the 
man  and  sets  him  apart  to  express  once  and  forever 
a  thought  which  is  essentially  his  own.  Centuries 
have  passed  since  the  first  great  dramatic  poems 
were  written;  and  yet  neither  Job  nor  ^Eschylus, 
neither  Shakespeare  nor  Moliere,  has  been  repeated. 
Every  dramatist  of  the  first  order  has  had  a 
fundamental  thought  about  life  which,  expressed 
in  his  own  way,  has  been  in  some  essential  things 
different  from  the  thought  of  all  his  fellows ;  and  that 
thought  has  contained  the  very  essence  of  his  person- 
ality. The  great  writers  speak  not  from  report,  but 
from  personal  knowledge.  They  differ  from  the 
lesser  writers  not  only  in  quality  of  workmanship,  but 
still  more  in  the  fact  that  they  are  witnesses  of  the 
truth  which  they  express.  They  have  seen  and  felt ; 
therefore  they  speak.  And  that  which  thus  sees  and 
feels  and  knows  is  the  man's  whole  nature,  not 
observation  only,  nor  thought  only,  nor  feeling  only. 
All  the  faculties,  the  aptitudes,  the  sensibilities,  the 
experiences  which  make  us  what  we  are,  are  involved 
in  this  process.  So  that  which  lies  deepest  in  a  man, 
his  thought  of  the  movement  of  things  in  which  he 
finds  himself,  expresses  completely  and  most  pro- 
foundly his  personality. 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  27 

There  are  some  elements  in  this  personality  which 
we  can  distinguish  and  trace.  There  are  racial  marks 
on  the  mind  and  temperament  of  every  man ;  there 
are  evident  impressions  of  the  time  in  which  he  lives, 
with  all  its  subtile  and  interwoven  influences;  but 
however  keenly  we  distinguish  these  secondary 
qualities,  and  however  acutely  we  analyze  them,  we 
never  uncover  the  secret  of  personality.  That  is 
a  thing  which  is  primary,  and  cannot  be  resolved  into 
its  elements,  —  a  thing  which  is  vital  and  cannot  be 
comprehended.  We  learn  more  and  more  of  the 
vital  processes,  but  we  never  overtake  life  itself;  we 
get  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  secret  of  genius,  but  we 
never  lay  our  hand  on  it.  There  is  something  in  us 
that  cometh  not  by  observation  and  that  escapes  our 
scrutiny;  and  this  sacred  and  inaccessible  thing, 
which  the  most  searching  science  is  powerless  to 
wrest  from  a  man,  is  what  he  gives  us  in  a  great  piece 
of  art.  Every  great  piece  of  art  expresses  a  great 
thought,  and  in  that  thought  is  summed  up  the  totality 
of  a  man's  nature  and  life. 

This  thought,  as  has  been  said,  is  not  primarily  the 
result  of  a  conscious  process  of  thinking.  It  comes 
to  a  man  he  knows  not  how ;  in  swift  flashes  of  in- 
telligence, in  the  sudden  illumination  of  experience, 
in  the  long  silence  of  brooding,  under  the  pressure 
of  tremendous  experiences.  It  is  distilled  into  a 
man's  soul  by  the  alchemy  of  living,  —  that  myste- 
rious process  by  which,  through  thought,  emotion, 
and  action,  we  attain  both  knowledge  and  character. 


28      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

The  frankest  autobiographies  always  leave  unsaid 
the  thing  we  care  most  to  know ;  they  give  us  hints, 
side-lights,  pregnant  suggestions,  but  they  always  leave 
a  residuum  of  mystery.  No  man  was  ever  yet  perfectly 
explained  to  his  fellows ;  and  no  man  ever  will  be. 
We  shall  know  some  men  far  more  thoroughly  than 
we  know  others,  but  we  shall  never  know  any  man 
completely.  Nor  will  any  man  ever  attain  complete 
self-knowledge,  —  that  kind  of  knowledge  which  will 
disclose  all  the  sources  of  his  power,  trace  back  every 
rivulet  of  influence  to  its  ancestral  spring,  uncover 
all  the  depths  not  only  of  personal  but  of  inherited 
experience,  make  clear  what  he  receives  from  his  own 
time,  and  mark  that  which  is  distinctively  his  own ; 
that  residuum  which  neither  time,  race,  nor  circum- 
stances account  for.  In  every  soul,  as  in  every  life, 
there  is  something  solitary  and  incommunicable,  —  a 
holy  of  holies  upon  which  the  veil  is  never  lifted. 
It  is  written  that  no  man  can  see  God  and  live  ;  and 
there  is  something  divine  in  us  upon  which  we  are 
not  suffered  to  look.  It  is  this  mysterious  and 
essential  personality,  modified  in  expression  by  the 
temporary  elements  of  place  and  age,  but  fundamen- 
tally apart  from  and  independent  of  them,  which 
inspires  and  gives  form  to  every  great  work  of  art ; 
so  that  there  is  in  every  masterpiece  something 
inexplicable,  —  something  which  cannot  be  referred  to 
anything  anterior;  something,  in  a  word,  which  we 
call  creative  because  we  cannot  account  for  it  in  any 
other  way.    An  imitative  work  discloses  its  parentage  : 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY   WORK.  29 

a  creative  work  stands  apart  and  remains  mute  when 
we  question  its  ancestry.  It  is  surrounded  by  the 
same  mystery  which  enfolds  every  birth,  which 
attaches  to  everything  that  is  born,  not  made. 

The  work  is  mysterious  even  to  its  creator. 
"The  soul,"  says  Calvert,  "while  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  greatness,  keeps  its  own  counsel ;  and  what 
it  has  been  doing  and  preparing  is  only  revealed 
by  the  completed  work."  It  is  a  very  suggestive 
fact  that  Goethe  could  never  explain  many  things  in 
"  Faust."  They  were  there,  and  that  was  about  the 
substance  of  his  knowledge  of  them.  Few  literary 
works  have  been  so  long  in  hand,  have  been  so  often 
taken  up  and  laid  aside,  have  received  such  constant 
and  long-continued  revision.  Of  the  outward  history 
of  few  poems  do  we  know  so  much ;  and  yet  there 
was  much  in  it  which  Goethe  confessed  himself 
unable  to  account  for.  The  origin  of  the  work  itself 
was  as  mysterious  to  him  as  to  every  one  else.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  indicate  the  sources  of  the  legend 
and  of  many  of  the  incidents  woven  into  it ;  but 
what  affinity  lodged  this  seed  in  the  soil  of  his 
nature,  what  were  the  stages  by  which  it  sank  deep 
into  his  soul  and  became  so  thoroughly  part  of  him- 
self that  it  came  forth  from  his  brain  not  only  re- 
fashioned, amplified,  harmonized  with  itself  in  artistic 
consistency,  but  pervaded  by  a  soul  which  made  it 
significant  of  profound  and  universal  truth ?  "I  can 
truly  say  of  my  production,"  said  Goethe,  referring 
to  his  drama  of  "  Tasso,"  "  it  is  bone  of  my  bone  and 


30       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

flesh  of  my  flesh.  .  .  .  They  come  and  ask  what  idea 
I  meant  to  embody  in  my  '  Faust,'  as  if  I  knew 
myself  and  could  inform  them."  For  more  than  sixty 
years  the  drama  was  on  his  mind ;  and  yet  he  tells  us 
that  the  whole  poem  rose  before  him  at  once  when  it 
first  touched  his  imagination.  He  often  spoke  of  the 
progress  of  the  work ;  there  are,  indeed,  few  works 
of  art  concerning  the  shaping  and  evolution  of  which 
we  possess  such  full  and  trustworthy  information ;  and 
yet  of  the  first  contract  between  the  idea  and  his  own 
soul,  all  he  can  tell  us  is  that  it  was  suddenly  and 
completely  disclosed  to  his  imagination.  His  ina- 
bility to  explain  it  was  not  due  to  lack  of  an  under- 
lying motive  or  to  vagueness  and  obscurity  of  idea, 
but  to  the  fact  that  he  did  not  consciously  originate 
it ;  it  came  to  him,  and  he  gave  it  form.  The  story 
of  Goethe's  masterpiece  is  the  story  of  every  master- 
piece ;  there  are  interesting  facts  in  every  such  story, 
but  the  essential  fact,  the  fact  that  would  have  ex- 
plained the  work,  is  always  missing;  no  man  can 
furnish  it,  because  no  man's  knowledge  has  ever  com- 
passed it.  Every  such  work  is  the  expression  of  a 
man's  personality ;  and  personality  is  a  primary  and 
unresolvable  force  in  the  world. 

Through  the  alembic  of  personality  pass  all  the 
ideas  which  appear  in  art ;  detached  from  a  person- 
ality, an  idea  may  appear  as  science  or  philosophy, 
but  it  never  can  appear  as  art.  It  is  this  truth  which 
Mr.  James  hints  at  when  he  says  that  art  is  mainly  a 
point  of  view;  it  is  that  and  as  much  more  as  one 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY   WORK.  3 1 

brings  to  the  point  of  view.  Whipple  had  the  same 
truth  in  mind  when  he  said  that  "  the  measure  of  a 
man's  individuality  is  his  creative  power ;  and  all  that 
Shakespeare  created  he  individually  included."  In 
order  to  show  Romeo  the  prey  of  a  consuming  pas- 
sion, Shakespeare  must  have  felt  the  possible  heat  of 
a  kindred  flame  ;  in  order  to  portray  Hamlet  bending 
beneath  the  awful  mystery  of  life  and  thought,  Shake- 
speare must  have  felt  the  danger  of  a  similar  loss  of 
adjustment  between  meditation  and  action ;  in  order 
to  picture  Antony  casting  a  world  away,  he  must 
have  known  the  power  of  such  a  spell  as  that  woven 
on  the  banks  of  the  Nile.  These  experiences  may 
not  have  been  actual  in  the  life  of  the  dramatist,  but 
they  must  all  have  been  possible.  They  form  the 
universal  element  in  which  he  works,  and  they  are 
transformed  into  art  by  passing  through  an  artist's 
personality.  No  two  men  ever  saw  the  same  rainbow, 
because  no  two  men  ever  looked  at  a  rainbow  from 
the  same  point  of  view ;  life  was  never  the  same  to 
any  two  human  hearts,  and,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
never  can  be.  ^Eschylus  will  discern  in  it  a  vastness 
and  mystery  which  will  escape  the  beautiful  but  dis- 
tinctively Greek  mind  of  Sophocles ;  Marlowe  will 
find  in  it  a  violence  and  excess  which  will  fall  below 
the  luminous  horizon  of  Shakespeare's  mind ;  Cor- 
neille  will  discover  in  it  a  rigid  and  stately  order, 
which  in  the  vital  and  mobile  mind  of  Moliere  will 
give  place  to  a  more  real  and  vivid  perception  of 
individual  characteristics. 


3  2       ESS  A  YS  IN  LITERAR  Y  INTER  PRE  TA  TION. 

The  rank  of  a  writer  rests  in  the  last  analysis  on 
the  distinctness  and  individuality  of  his  thought  and 
of  the  form  which  it  takes ;  and  the  fuller  and  more 
complete  the  personality  of  the  man,  the  more  power- 
ful and  varied  will  be  the  work  of  his  hand.  A  limited 
experience  and  restricted  insight,  like  Grey's,  mean  a 
work  which,  despite  its  supreme  quality,  is  seen  to  lie 
within  narrow  confines ;  a  rich  experience,  a  broad 
insight,  a  limitless  intellectual  sympathy,  like  Brown- 
ing's, necessarily  imply  a  vast  range  of  expression,  a 
creation  adequate  in  scope  and  variety  to  the  force 
of  the  creative  impulse.  If  this  power  of  seeing,  this 
swift  capacity  of  entering  into  all  life,  reaches  its 
highest  development,  we  have  a  Dante  compassing  a 
whole  epoch  of  history  with  his  thought,  or  a  Shake- 
speare speaking  out  of  the  heart  of  entire  humanity. 
They  have  seen ;  they  know ;  therefore  they  speak. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  universal  literature  in 
the*  sense  which  involves  complete  escape  from  all  the 
water-marks  of  place  and  time.  An  expression  of 
thought  thus  detached  would  be  without  structural 
order  and  harmony,  without  colour,  atmosphere,  style ; 
would  cease  to  be  literature,  and  become  philosophy. 
The  star  does  not  lose  the  majesty  of  its  movement 
or  the  splendour  of  its  aspect  because,  if  we  observe 
it  at  all,  we  must  observe  it  from  some  infinitesimally 
small  point  of  earth.  No  man  can  study  or  interpret 
life  save  from  the  point  of  view  where  he  finds  him- 
self; and  the  range  and  beauty  of  vision  which  he 
discerns  depend  upon  the  clearness  and  range  of  his 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  33 

sight.  In  the  deepest  sense  there  are  no  abstract 
truths,  no  worlds  swinging  in  invisible  space ;  that 
only  exists  for  us  at  any  given  time  which  in  some 
way  reaches  and  touches  us,  in  some  way  penetrates 
and  affects  us.  No  truth  gets  into  human  keeping 
by  any  other  path  than  the  individual  soul,  nor  into 
human  speech  by  any  other  medium  than  the  indi- 
vidual mind.  The  universal  element  in  literature  lies 
not  in  its  detachment  from  personality,  in  its  separa- 
tion from  the  peculiarities  of  age,  place,  and  person, 
but  in  the  completeness  and  power  with  which  it  ex- 
presses these  things,  —  for  all  things  partake  of  the 
universal,  and  we  have  only  to  pierce  the  special  and 
particular  deep  enough,  and  we  shall  find  it.  It  is 
the  function  of  literature  to  portray  and  interpret 
those  things  which  all  men  understand  because  they 
are  shared  by  all  men ;  but  both  in  portrayal  and 
interpretation  it  is  the  presence  of  the  art  quality 
which  makes  the  work  literature ;  and  this  quality  is 
always  imparted  by  personality.  Detach  the  truth 
embodied  in  "  Hamlet "  from  the  dramatic  form  in 
which  it  is  cast,  and  there  remains  a  series  of  aphorisms 
or  comments  upon  character  and  life ;  the  truth  thus 
expressed  is  not  less  true  because  it  has  changed  its 
form,  but  it  has  ceased  to  be  literature. 

Every  work  of  art  has  an  interior  order  or  architec- 
ture which  in  any  analysis  is  hardly  less  important  or 
significant  than  the  leading  conception  or  idea  which 
it  conveys.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  impossible  to 
separate  the  two ;  in  any  true  work  of  art  they  are 
3 


34      ESSAYS  IN  LITERACY  INTERPRETATION. 

so  perfectly  fused  and  blended  that  they  are  no  longer 
separable.  When  we  have  detached  the  thought  of 
"  Pippa  Passes  "  or  "  In  Memoriam  "  from  its  organic 
sequence  in  the  poem,  we  have  destroyed  the  poem. 
The  division  is  impossible,  because  it  does  not  exist 
in  the  work ;  and  yet,  as  a  matter  of  convenience 
and  in  aid  of  clearness  of  thought,  arbitrary  and  artifi- 
cial distinctions  may  be  used  to  advantage.  The 
structural  quality  of  a  work  is  something  much  more 
essential  than  the  outward  form  which  determines  the 
department  of  literature  to  which  it  belongs.  The 
form  is  part  of  it,  but  part  only.  The  structural 
quality  of  the  "  Divine  Comedy "  is  the  very  sub- 
stance of  the  poem ;  it  is  that  which  gives  it  its 
unique  place  and  value.  Dante  had  a  clear,  profound, 
and  spiritual  conception  of  the  soul  of  man  in  the 
vast  experience  of  life.  If  he  had  been  a  philosopher 
only  or  distinctively,  he  would  have  written  a  system 
of  theology;  but  he  was  a  poet  of  supreme  insight 
and  force.  He  did  not  meditate  upon  abstractions ; 
he  saw  the  soul  of  man  in  all  the  manifold  stages  of 
its  experience ;  it  was  not  the  thought  which  he  pur- 
sued, it  was  the  soul  with  which  he  walked  in  all  the 
length  of  its  awful  journeying.  He  did  not  philoso- 
phize about  punishment ;  he  breathed  the  very  air 
and  was  blown  upon  by  the  very  flames  of  hell.  He 
did  not  theorize  about  purification;  he  heard  the 
groans  and  felt  the  hot  and  bitter  tears  of  purgatory. 
He  did  not  dream  about  the  rewards  of  righteousness 
and  the  blessedness  of  the  good;  he  heard  the  in- 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  35 

effable  strains,  and  covered  his  face  in  the  glory  of 
Paradise.  The  great  conception  was  not  first  a 
system  of  thought  and  then  a  sublime  dramatic  crea- 
tion; long  purposed,  sternly  executed,  it  was  never 
other  than  a  complete  and  consuming  vision  of  hu- 
manity under  the  conditions  of  eternity, —  when  penalty 
does  not  follow,  but  is  part  of  sin ;  when  result  does 
not  pursue  but  accompanies  act ;  when  reward  and 
retribution  are  realized  at  the  same  instant  within  and 
without  the  soul.  That  which  Dante  saw  was  con- 
crete and  indivisible  ;  it  did  not  come  to  him  in  parts, 
although  it  grew  into  proportion  and  harmony  in  his 
mind ;  he  did  not  put  it  together  as  a  piece  of  mech- 
anism, fitting  thought  to  expression  and  matching 
the  great  inspiring  idea  with  a  majestic  epic  form. 
In  such  a  work  of  art  there  is  no  separation  of  soul 
and  body ;  a  thing  of  immortality  has  no  perishable 
part.  It  comes,  an  indivisible,  indestructible  creation, 
from  the  soul  of  the  artist ;  no  sound  of  hammer  was 
heard  in  the  making  of  it,  —  for,  like  all  great  products 
of  the  imagination,  it  was  a  creation  and  a  growth,  not 
a  mechanism  and  a  manufacture.  Another  poet  of 
Dante's  genius,  dealing  with  the  same  theme,  would 
have  given  us  a  different  poem,  because  he  would  have 
conceived  of  it  in  a  different  way ;  and  a  difference 
of  construction  would  have  involved  a  difference  of 
idea.  If  one  may  venture  upon  philosophic  terms, 
the  moment  the  idea  shapes  itself,  harmonizes  itself, 
becomes  organic  and  concrete  instead  of  abstract, 
the  structural  element  enters  into  the  process.    The 


$6         ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

work  passes  through  the  pre-natal  stages  before  it  is 
born  in  the  artist's  mind ;  it  is  fashioned  in  that  sub- 
lime mystery  which  lies  behind  all  birth.  Shall  it  be 
epic,  lyric,  or  drama  ?  is  a  question  which  the  poet  is 
never  asked.  It  is  already  one  or  the  other  of  these 
before  it  is  disclosed  to  him.  By  the  structure  of  a 
great  literary  work  is  meant,  therefore,  something  very 
different  from  its  mere  form,  —  something  which  is  of 
the  very  heart  and  soul  of  the  work ;  that  which  brings 
it  out  of  the  region  of  abstraction  into  the  world  of 
human  perception  and  thought;  that  by  which  the 
ideal  enters  into  and  becomes  a  part  of  the  real. 

This  structural  element  is  discovered,  appropriated, 
or  furnished  by  the  imagination,  —  the  one  creative 
faculty  we  possess,  and  the  "  master  light  of  all  our 
seeing."  The  more  closely  we  study  human  knowl- 
edge and  thought,  the  more  clearly  do  we  perceive 
that  this  word  "  imagination  "  has  more  compass  and 
depth  of  meaning  than  any  other  word  which  we 
apply  to  our  faculties.  It  includes  all  that  we  pos- 
sess of  constructive  power,  —  the  power  of  holding 
masses  of  facts  so  firmly  and  continuously  in  the 
field  of  vision  as  to  enable  us  to  discover  their  unity 
and  the  laws  which  govern  them ;  in  other  words, 
science,  —  the  power  of  seeing  the  permanent  in  the 
transitory,  the  universal  in  the  particular;  in  other 
words,  philosophy,  —  the  power  of  perceiving  and  real- 
izing the  soul  of  things  visible,  and  out  of  the  real 
constructing  the  ideal ;  in  other  words,  art,  —  the 
power  of  discerning  the  spiritual  behind  the  material, 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  37 

the  creator  behind  the  creation;  in  other  words, 
religion.  Wherever  and  whenever  life  becomes  great 
and  the  world  real  to  us,  the  imagination  holds  aloft 
its  quenchless  torch.  In  every  hour  when  a  new 
truth  moves  back  a  little  the  horizon  of  thought,  or 
a  new  birth  of  beauty  expands  a  little  the  world  of 
art,  the  imagination  is  present.  "  I  assert  for  myself," 
said  William  Blake,  "  that  I  do  not  behold  the  out- 
ward creation,  and  that  to  me  it  would  be  a  hindrance 
and  not  action.  I  question  not  my  corporeal  eye  any 
more  than  I  would  question  a  window  concerning  a 
sight.  I  look  through  it,  and  not  with  it."  It  is  to 
the  imagination  alone  that  second  sight  belongs,  —  that 
sight  which  does  not  rest  in  obvious  and  material 
things,  but  through  them,  as  through  an  open  win- 
dow, perceives  another  and  diviner  order  of  creation. 
Thus  the  imagination  fulfils  for  the  soul  the  double 
function  of  seeing  and  interpreting,  of  discovering 
and  possessing. 

But  the  imagination  is  not  simply  or  mainly  an 
organ  of  vision  ;  it  is  a  hand  even  more  than  an  eye, 
and  a  hand  which  moves  to  the  impulse  of  inspira- 
tion. It  was  the  imagination  which  discovered  the 
beauty  of  the  world  to  the  earliest  men,  and  it  was 
the  imagination  which  peopled  it  with  the  antique 
gods ;  in  the  history  of  art  seeing  and  creating  have 
never  been  dissevered.  It  is  by  the  activity  of  the 
imagination  that  we  possess  those  masterpieces  which, 
if  they  fail  to  convey  all  that  the  ideal  contains,  de- 
fine for  us  the  laws  of  beauty  and  fix  the  standards  of 


38  ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

supreme  excellence.     If  they  cannot  bring  perfection 
within  the  range  of  our  senses,  they  fail  not  to  bring 
it  within  the  reach  of  our  souls.     Now,  the  imagina- 
tion which  perceives  the  idea  under  some  inevitable 
structural  form  is  not  less  distinctive  and  individual 
than  is  that  mysterious  personality  which  makes  a 
man  what  he  is,  as   different  from  all   other   men. 
This  personality  determines  the  idea  that  becomes 
the  germ  of  a  great  creative  work ;  determines  that 
the  story  of  Prometheus  shall  belong  to  ^Eschylus, 
and  the  story  of  Faust  to  Goethe,  and  the  conception 
of  Tartuffe   to  Moliere;  but   it   is   the   imagination 
which  opens  the  personality  to  the  idea,  and  by  plac- 
ing it  in  relation  with  the  visible  and  actual,  brings 
the  material  within  reach  of  the  shaping  hand.    What 
interior  structure  the  idea  shall  have,  how  it  shall  be 
shaped,  where  unite  with  and  where  depart  from  that 
which  art    has   already  achieved,    depends    on   the 
individual  imagination.      Faust  will  be  one  thing  to 
Marlowe  and  an  entirely  different  thing  to  Goethe, 
the  dominant  idea  remaining  the  same;    and  when 
we  study  the  differences  of  structure  and  treatment 
between   the  two  dramas,  we  perceive  that  we    are 
studying  the  differences  between  the  two  poets.     Be- 
tween Voltaire's  thought  of  Jean  d'Arc  in  "  La  Pu- 
celle  "  and  the  vision  on  the  canvas  of  Bastien- Le- 
page, what  an  almost  measureless  divergence  of  per- 
sonality is  expressed  !      If  the  masters  of  creative 
literature    are  studied  by  the  comparative  method, 
nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  differences  which 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  39 

exist  between  them  in  quality  and  force  of  imagina- 
tion ;  and  it  is  such  study  which  enables  us  to  under- 
stand that  the  imagination  is  the  creative  faculty. 

It  is  only  the  most  superficial  thinking  which  fails 
to  perceive  that  style  is  no  less  integral,  essential,  and 
inevitable  than  inspiring  idea,  structural  form,  or 
force  and  quality  of  imagination.  It  is  obvious  that 
the  style  of  a  writer  is  not  uninfluenced  by  his  age  : 
compare  the  prose  of  Sir  Thomas  Malory  with  that 
of  Milton,  that  of  Fuller  with  that  of  Addison,  that 
of  Johnson  with  that  of  Ruskin  or  Newman,  and  the 
presence  of  a  process  of  development  is  unmistak- 
able. It  is  obvious  also  that  a  writer,  by  that  rigid 
discipline  which  is  the  condition  of  all  artistic  ex- 
cellence, may  expand  and  even  radically  change  his 
style.  Nevertheless,  it  remains  true  that  the  style  of 
a  genuine  writer  is  in  the  deepest  sense  inevitable, 
and  that  all  his  conscious  effort  has  not  fashioned, 
but  found  it.  It  was  already  existent,  to  borrow  the 
idea  of  one  of  the  masters  of  style,  Flaubert ;  and  the 
whole  education  of  the  man  in  the  secrets  of  his  art 
has  been  an  endeavour  to  bring  together  two  things 
which  are  parts  of  one  whole.  "  Possessed,"  says  a 
critic  of  the  author  of  "  Madame  Bovary,"  "  of  an 
absolute  belief  that  there  exists  but  one  way  of  ex- 
pressing one  thing,  one  word  to  call  it  by,  one  ad- 
jective to  qualify,  one  verb  to  animate  it,  he  gave 
himself  to  superhuman  labour  for  the  discovery,  in 
every  phrase,  of  that  word,  that  verb,  that  epithet. 
In  this  way  he  believed  in  some  mysterious  harmony 


4°       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

of  expression,  and  when  a  true  word  seemed  to  him 
to  lack  euphony,  still  went  on  seeking  another  with 
invincible  patience,  certain  that  he  had  not  yet  got 
hold  of  the  unique  word.  ...  A  thousand  preoccu- 
pations would  beset  him  at  the  same  moment,  always 
with  this  desperate  certitude  fixed  in  his  spirit,  — 
among  all  the  expressions  in  the  world,  all  forms  and 
terms  of  expression,  there  is  but  one  —  one  form, 
one  mode  —  to  express  what  I  want  to  say."  There 
is  no  paradox  in  all  this;  for  while  style  is  an  end 
which  may  be  consciously  worked  for,  it  is  also  and 
always,  whenever  it  reaches  the  highest  level  of  art, 
a  full,  free,  and  powerful  expression  of  personality, 
and  as  such  it  was  determined  for  the  man  in  the 
hour  in  which  his  personality  was  compounded.  The 
search  for  style  is  therefore  never  a  search  for  some- 
thing artificial,  something  so  distinct  from  the  searcher 
that  he  may  choose  among  several,  rejecting  one  and 
accepting  another ;  it  is  always  the  effort  to  attain 
complete  self-expression.  Some  writers  never  find 
their  true  style,  and  failing  of  genuine  self-expres- 
sion, soon  pass  into  oblivion ;  but  genius  never  misses 
its  vocabulary. 

A  genuine  literary  artist  never  uses  words  which 
are  merely  ornamental  and  therefore  extraneous ;  his 
phrase  contains  neither  more  nor  less  than  his 
thought ;  when  it  fails  either  by  surplusage  or  by 
suppression,  it  falls  short  of  that  perfect  art  which  is 
the  instant  and  final  identification  of  truth  and 
beauty.     The  artist  is  known,  as  Schiller  said,  by 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY    WORK.  4* 

what  he  omits  quite  as  much  as  by  what  he  includes. 
"  For  in  truth  all  art  does  but  consist  in  the  removal 
of  surplusage,  from  the  last  finish  of  the  gem  engraver 
blowing  away  the  last  particle  of  invisible  dust,  back 
to  the  earliest  divination  of  the  finished  work  to  be, 
lying  somewhere,  according  to  Michelangelo's  fancy, 
in  the  rough-hewn  block  of  stone."  The  artist  has 
no  tricks,  devices,  or  artifices ;  the  secret  of  his  work- 
manship is  not  mechanical,  but  original  and  vital, 
and  so  completely  his  own  that  it  cannot  be  detached 
from  him  even  in  thought.  When  we  speak  of  style 
in  connection  with  the  masters  of  literary  form, — 
with  Shakespeare,  with  Keats,  with  Tennyson,  with 
Hawthorne,  with  Arnold,  —  we  become  conscious  that 
we  are  speaking  of  something  not  only  obviously 
beautiful,  but  mysteriously  and  inexplicably  personal ; 
something  which,  although  visible  and  tangible,  par- 
takes so  largely  of  the  invisible  soul  that  it  escapes 
our  analysis.  Style  is  not  only  the  quality  which  de- 
fines a  creation  as  belonging  to  art,  but  which,  more 
than  any  other  which  we  can  discover,  is  most  subtly 
and  comprehensively  expressive  of  personality.  In 
it,  as  in  a  medium  so  delicate  that  it  responds  to  the 
lightest  touch,  so  stable  that  it  retains  the  most 
powerful  impression,  we  discover  the  compass  and 
resources  of  a  man's  soul ;  here  he  reflects  himself  as 
in  a  mirror,  not  only  with  conscious  purpose,  but 
with  that  deep  unconsciousness  the  perpetual  revela- 
tion of  which  is  the  deepest  inlet  of  truth  into  this 
world  of  ours. 


42       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Dante  was  the  first  of  the  modern  poets  in  time  as 
well  as  in  depth  and  power ;  and  if  we  seek  for  the 
reason  of  his  primacy  in  order  of  literary  development, 
we  shall  find  it  in  his  own  work.  The  poets  before 
him  had  no  clear  thought  of  themselves ;  they  were 
men  not  so  much  of  defective  as  of  undeveloped 
personality.  They  were  bound  by  traditions,  circum- 
scribed by  external  conditions,  ignorant  of  the  author- 
ity and  the  resources  of  their  own  souls.  They  could 
not  trust  their  intuitions  and  depend  upon  their  own 
skill,  because  they  did  not  know  what  was  within 
them.  They  belonged  to  that  dim  mediaeval  world 
so  long  under  a  spell  which  lulled  the  personality  of 
men  into  a  deep  sleep.  That  sleep  was  not  without 
splendid  dreams  and  heavenly  visions,  but  there  was 
no  deep  and  vital  sense  of  reality.  Dante  was  the 
first  to  awaken  from  this  sleep.  There  is  no  more 
vigorous  personality  in  history  than  that  of  this 
banished  Florentine,  who,  loving  Florence,  could  live 
apart  from  her ;  saturated  with  the  scholarship  of  his 
time,  could  look  upon  the  world  with  his  own  eyes, 
and  substitute  his  own  mother  tongue  for  the  conven- 
tional Latin;  loyal  to  the  Church,  could  write  the 
doom  of  popes  and  priests  with  unfaltering  hand.  If 
one  reads  carefully,  he  will  find  in  the  "  Vita  Nuova  " 
the  autobiography  of  the  first  great  modern  personal- 
ity, —  the  man  who  turned  from  the  outer  to  the  inner 
world  for  truth,  who  gained  complete  consciousness 
of  the  mighty  force  within  his  own  nature,  and  used 
it   with  absolute   freedom.     He  was   the  first   poet 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY  WORK.  43 

because  he  was  the  first  artist ;  and  the  secret  of  his 
mastery  of  art  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  attained  full 
self-consciousness.  For  two  centuries  and  a  half  Italy 
was  crowded  with  brilliant  figures,  —  men  who  used 
all  the  arts  with  a  freedom  and  force  which  have 
enriched  the  world  for  all  time.  The  secret  of  this 
protracted  and  splendid  productiveness  lies  in  the 
tremendous  force  of  personality  which  was  liberated 
by  the  Renaissance, — a  force  which  sought  expression 
through  every  form  of  creative  energy  and  through 
every  social  activity. 

In  France  the  same  outbreak  of  personal  force 
appears  in  the  early  part  of  the  long  reign  of  Louis 
XIV. ;  when  the  impulse  and  aspiration  of  youth  and 
hope  were  in  the  air,  before  prolonged  absolutism, 
exhausting  campaigns,  and  the  barrenness  of  selfish 
and  superficial  ideals  drained  the  national  life  and 
blighted  the  national  imagination.  In  the  England  of 
Elizabeth  there  was  a  liberation  of  personal  force 
such  as  no  other  country  has  ever  seen  at  a  single 
period.  Many  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  impress 
one  as  being  under  a  demoniac  spell ;  they  are  torn 
and  destroyed  by  their  own  emotions ;  a  titanic  rage 
possesses  them,  and,  like  Marlowe,  they  push  life 
beyond  all  bounds  in  the  desperate  effort  to  compass 
the  illimitable  and  perform  the  impossible.  They  fail 
through  excess  of  force  not  yet  turned  into  power. 
They  had  come  to  the  consciousness  of  personality, 
but  not  to  the  calmness  of  self-mastery.  Shake- 
speare came  at  the  very  moment  when  the  ferment  in 


44.     ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  blood  was  over,  and  men,  no  longer  blinded  by  a 
sudden  access  of  strength,  could  measure  intelligently 
the  force  of  personality  and  the  strength  of  the 
external  forces  which  condition  human  achievement 
and  expression.  Shakespeare  had  all  of  Marlowe's 
force,  but  he  had  also  clear  understanding  of  the 
material  in  which  he  had  to  work.  He  had  arrived 
at  full  self-knowledge ;  and,  therefore,  of  all  men  of  his 
time,  perhaps  of  all  time,  his  personality  had  freest 
and  most  complete  expression.  Toward  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth  century  a  similar  liberation  of  personal 
force  was  seen  in  Germany,  where  a  group  of  great 
minds  appeared,  divided  by  difference  of  gifts  and 
divergence  of  situation,  but  harmonious  in  this  :  that 
each,  following  boldly  the  lead  of  his  own  genius, 
discovered  the  two  or  three  great  principles  which 
shape  and  direct  modern  thought. 

These  illustrations  will  serve  to  bring  out  the  fact 
that  great  literature  is  possible  only  when  there  are 
great  personalities  to  create  it.  On  the  one  hand,  a 
great  writer  puts  into  his  work  that  which  is  peculiar 
to  his  own  nature,  and  makes  it  an  expression  of  his 
deepest  and  most  hidden  self;  on  the  other  hand,  liter- 
ature depends  for  its  enlargement  and  expansion  on 
the  appearance  of  men  of  great  and  deep  personality. 
Until  the  idea  of  personality  is  developed  and  be- 
comes general,  the  creation  of  literature  is  impossible. 
Races  which  are  defective  in  the  sense  of  personality 
are  incapable  of  large  and  varied  literary  production ; 
races  in  which  this  sense  becomes  most  keen  and 


PERSONALITY  IN  LITERARY   WORK.  45 

general  inevitably  turn  to  art.  Self-expression  is  a 
necessity  when  the  sense  of  self  becomes  deep,  rich, 
and  powerful ;  when  all  life  awakes  to  consciousness 
through  it,  and  the  world  lies  reflected  in  it  as  the 
summer  night  in  the  sea  that  moves  through  it 
hushed  and  calmed  as  with  the  deep  pulsation  of 
the  universe. 


THE   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   MODERN 
CRITICISM. 

In  his  essay  on  "  The  Study  of  Poetry,"  Mr.  Arnold 
warns  us  against  permitting  the  true  estimate  of  poe- 
try to  be  superseded  by  the  historical  estimate  or  the 
personal  estimate.  The  final  test  of  poetry  is  neither 
its  relation  to  the  development  of  a  nation's  language 
and  thought,  nor  its  interest  and  importance  to  us  by 
reason  of  its  affinity  with  our  personal  tastes  and  ex- 
periences, but  the  soundness  of  its  substance  and 
perfection  of  its  form.  This  statement  may  be  so  ex- 
tended in  its  application  as  to  make  it  inclusive  of  all 
literature.  In  the  nature  of  things,  the  highest  test 
can  be  neither  historic  nor  personal,  but  must  be  uni- 
versal, —  a  test,  that  is,  which  involves  primarily  truth 
neither  to  historic  nor  to  personal  relations,  but  truth 
to  something  common  to  all  men  in  whom  the  literary 
instinct  has  found  normal  development.  When  the 
highest  court  in  Christendom  —  the  consensus  of  the 
educated  opinion  of  the  world  —  assigns  their  relative 
places  to  the  great  writers,  this  supreme  test  must 
always  be  applied ;  but  it  is  only  on  rare  occasions 
that  this  supreme  tribunal  pronounces  judgment. 
Writers  of  world-wide  import,  whose  work  sustains  the 
application  of  the  very  highest  test,  do  not  come  to 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        47 

the  judgment-seat  of  this  high  tribunal  oftener  than 
four  or  five  times  in  a  century.  For  the  most  part,  it 
is  with  the  men  whose  inferiority  to  Homer  and 
Dante,  to  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  is  clearly  apparent 
that  criticism  concerns  itself.  These  illustrious  shades 
have  received  but  a  single  comrade  into  their  immor- 
tal fellowship  during  the  present  century.  Below 
these  foremost  names  there  are  written  those  of  a 
noble  company  who,  if  they  have  failed  of  the  highest 
places,  have  come  near  the  shining  goal ;  and  it  is 
with  these  that  criticism  chiefly  concerns  itself. 

The  supreme  test  separated  from  all  other  tests  is 
rarely  applied  ;  the  supreme  test  associated  with  other 
and  lesser  tests  is  in  constant  use.  Literature  is  an 
art,  and  therefore  submits  itself  to  the  law  of  beauty 
which  supplies  the  test  of  art ;  but  it  is  also  a  revela- 
tion of  the  spirit  of  man,  and  there  is  to  be  found  in 
it  something  more  than  the  perfect  felicity  and  un- 
broken serenity  of  the  most  finely  tempered  souls. 
The  buoyancy  of  Homer  is  one  of  our  great  posses- 
sions ;  but  there  is  something  to  be  learned  also  from 
the  despondency  of  Leopardi.  The  mastery  of  Shake- 
speare over  all  the  materials  of  his  work  is  inspiring ; 
but  there  is  something  significant  also  in  the  turbu- 
lence of  Byron.  The  amplitude  of  culture  opens  the 
heart  of  the  modern  world  in  Goethe  ;  but  the  provin- 
cial sincerity  of  Mistral  has  something  to  teach  us. 
Dante's  majestic  strength  makes  us  feel  the  identity 
of  great  living  and  great  art;  but  there  is  something 
for  us  in  the  pathetic  felicity  of  De  Musset  and  the 


48       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

often  unavailing  beauty  of  Shelley.  In  each  writer  of 
any  force  and  genius  there  is  not  only  the  element 
which  makes  him  amenable  to  the  highest  law  of  criti- 
cism, there  is  also  something  which  appeals  to  our 
individual  consciousness  and  is  distinctly  personal,  — 
something  which  is  the  impress  of  the  inheritance  and 
larger  circumstance  of  the  time,  and  is  therefore  his- 
toric, and  something  which  lets  us  into  the  soul  of  a 
generation  of  men,  or  of  a  period  of  time  or  of  a  deep 
movement  of  faith  and  thought.  A  great  piece  of 
literature  may  be  studied  from  each  of  these  points 
of  view ;  and  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  its  meaning,  it 
must  be  so  studied.  Every  enduring  literary  work 
not  only  affords  material  for,  but  demands,  this  com- 
prehensive study,  —  a  study  which  is  at  once  critical, 
historic,  and  personal. 

The  "  Divine  Comedy  "  has  been  potent  enough  to 
give  birth  to  a  large  literature  of  secondary  and  de- 
rivative books ;  its  philosophy,  its  theology,  its  cos- 
mology, its  politics,  its  history,  its  art,  have  each  in 
turn  been  subjected  to  the  most  searching  investi- 
gation. We  know  the  rank  of  the  great  poem  as 
literature ;  we  know  its  historic  position  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Italian  mind  ;  we  know  its  profound 
analysis  of  the  soul  and  its  experiences;  we  know 
what  a  marvellous  revelation  of  life  lies  in  the  heart  of 
it  as  the  supreme  and  final  reward  of  patient  and 
sympathetic  study.  No  account  of  Dante's  work 
would  be  adequate  which  failed  to  take  into  account 
all  these  elements  of  its  power.     It  is  something  more 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        49 

than  a  noble  substance  of  thought  encased  in  a  noble 
form ;  something  more  than  a  deep  glimpse  into  ex- 
periences which  under  different  names  are  common  to 
all  men ;  something  more  than  a  chapter  of  history 
written  in  fire  and  blood.  It  is  all  these,  and  it  is 
something  greater.  Dante  was  a  man  of  genius,  a 
man  of  wonderful  perceptive  and  receptive  power,  a 
man  to  feel  even  more  profoundly  than  he  thought, 
and  to  speak  even  wiser  than  he  knew.  Humanity, 
under  the  pressure  of  that  education  which  we  call 
history,  revealed  the  unfathomable  depth  and  wonder 
of  its  life  through  him.  We  find  this  same  quality  of 
revelation  in  Homer,  in  Shakespeare,  in  Milton,  in 
Goethe ;  we  find  it  in  the  work  of  all  men  of  genius 
who  have  written  in  prose  or  verse;  we  find  it  in 
Plato,  in  Marcus  Aurelius,  in  Bacon,  in  Lessing,  in 
Carlyle,  in  Newman,  in  Emerson.  And  we  find  it  in 
all  the  great  forms  which  literature  takes  on,  —  in 
poetry,  the  drama,  fiction,  history,  essay,  criticism. 
Every  expression  of  life  is  not  literature  ;  but  nothing 
which  possesses  the  indefinable  quality  of  literature 
fails  to  tell  us  something  about  that  all-embracing 
fact.  Forms,  standards,  methods,  change ;  but  the 
unchangeable  element  in  all  literature  is  the  presence 
of  some  aspect  of  life  reflected,  reported,  interpreted, 
with  more  or  less  fidelity  and  power. 

Now,  the  study  of  literature  in  these  larger  rela- 
tions,  these   multiform   aspects,  has   never  been  so 
earnestly   pursued   as    during    the   present   century. 
Never  before    has  such   a  vast  amount  of  material 
4 


SO       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

been  accumulated;  never  before  have  there  been 
such  opportunities  of  using  on  a  great  scale  the  com- 
parative method.  This  pursuit  has  become  a  passion 
with  many  of  the  most  sensitive  minds  ;  and  we  have 
as  a  result  a  body  of  literary  interpre  tation  and  phi- 
losophy in  the  form  of  criticism  so  great  in  mass  and 
so  important  in  substance  as  to  constitute  one  of  the 
chief  distinctively  modern  contributions  to  the  art  of 
letters.  For  this  study  of  books  and  the  men  who 
made  them  is  not  the  pastime  of  professional  Dryas- 
dusts ;  it  is  the  original  and  in  a  large  measure  the 
creative  work  of  those  who,  in  other  literary  periods 
and  under  other  intellectual  and  social  influences, 
would  have  illustrated  their  genius  through  the  epic, 
the  drama,  or  the  lyric.  Lessing,  Herder,  Goethe, 
Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Sainte-Beuve,  Arnold,  Amiel, 
Emerson,  Lowell,  and  Stedman  have  not  been  stu- 
dents of  the  work  of  other  men  simply  from  force  of 
the  scholarly  impulse ;  they  have  been  irresistibly 
attracted  to  the  study  of  literature  because  literature 
has  disclosed  to  them  the  soul  and  the  laws  of  life 
and  art.  The  passion  for  contact  with  the  great  and 
inexhaustible  impulses  which  unify  human  life  under 
all  conditions  has  led  these  diligent  explorers  from 
one  continent  to  another  until  a  new  world  lies  with- 
in our  ken.  Each  literature  in  turn  is  yielding  its 
secrets  of  race  inheritance,  temperament,  genius ; 
each  related  group  of  literatures  is  disclosing  the 
common  characteristics  of  the  family  of  races  behind 
it;    each   literary   epoch   is  revealing    the  spiritual, 


SIGNIFICANCE  OP  MODERN  CRITICISM.        $l 

moral,  and  social  forces  which  dominated  it ;  each 
great  literary  form  is  discovering  its  intimate  and 
necessary  relation  with  some  fact  of  life,  some  stage 
or  process  of  experience.  We  know  the  Greek  race 
in  large  measure  through  the  Greek  literature ;  we 
know  the  unspent  forces  which  stirred  the  Elizabethan 
age  through  the  Elizabethan  writers ;  and  we  know 
why,  at  intervals,  the  greatest  literary  minds  have 
used  the  drama,  the  lyric,  the  novel,  as  forms  of  ex- 
pression. All  this  we  owe  to  the  modern  critical 
movement,  —  a  movement  not  so  much  of  study  and 
comparison  for  the  purposes  of  judgment  by  fixed 
standards,  as  of  investigation  for  the  purpose  of  lay- 
ing bare  the  common  laws  of  life  and  art ;  of  making 
it  clear  to  us  that  literature  is  always  the  vital  utter- 
ance of  insight  and  experience. 

The  earliest  development  of  criticism  on  any 
considerable  scale  —  the  criticism  of  Alexandria  and 
of  the  later  stages  of  the  revival  of  classical  learning 
in  Italy,  for  example  —  was  largely  textual ;  it  con- 
cerned itself  chiefly  with  the  settlement  of  questions 
of  variant  versions ;  it  was  mainly  and  necessarily 
absorbed  in  a  study  of  words  and  phrases.  Criticism 
of  the  higher  order  —  criticism  which  searches  for 
the  laws  of  beauty  in  the  creations  of  art  —  is  not 
possible  until  there  has  been  a  large  accumulation  of 
material  upon  which  it  can  work.  The  drama  must 
pass  through  the  entire  period  of  its  development, 
from  its  rudimentary  form  in  the  chorus  to  its  per- 
fection in  the  plays  of  Sophocles,  before    Aristotle 


52       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

announces  its  laws  and  defines  its  aims.  Not  until 
a  literary  form  has  been  completely  worked  out  does 
it  disclose  the  law  of  its  interior  structure  and  its 
resources  of  expression.  Nor  can  any  single  work  of 
literary  art  furnish  the  elements  for  aesthetic  criticism  ; 
there  must  be  kindred  works  with  which  comparison 
may  be  made  and  resemblances  or  contrasts  noted. 
When  aesthetic  criticism  is  fully  equipped  and  de- 
veloped, there  remains  still  another  stage  in  the  evo- 
lution ;  the  criticism  which  deals  with  literature  as  a 
whole,  which  studies  the  large  conditions  under 
which  it  is  created,  which  takes  account  of  race,  time, 
circumstance,  which  discerns  in  the  detached  works 
of  a  man  or  a  generation  or  race  an  adequate  expres- 
sion of  human  experience  and  an  authentic  revelation 
of  human  life,  is  still  to  come ;  and  this  larger  criti- 
cism is  not  possible  until  universal  literature  is  open 
to  the  critic.  It  is  true  that  these  different  and  pro- 
gressive stages  are  not  always  clearly  defined ;  they 
shade  into  each  other,  as  do  the  various  forms  of 
animal  and  vegetable  life.  They  are  often  contem- 
poraneous in  the  same  piece  of  critical  work ;  com- 
ment on  questions  of  text,  illustration  of  aesthetic 
quality,  and  recognition  of  rank  and  significance  in 
the  general  movement  of  history  often  go  hand  in 
hand  in  the  work  of  a  critic  of  the  first  rank.  Never- 
theless, these  three  stages  of  the  development  of 
criticism  are  distinctly  and  unmistakably  marked. 

Textual  criticism  may  begin  with  the  first  study  of 
a  literary  work,  since  it  concerns   that  work  alone, 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        53 

and  has  no  relation  to  literature  at  large.  Textual 
criticism  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  began,  doubtless, 
with  the  attempt,  in  the  time  of  Pisistratus,  to  collect 
these  wandering  stories.  Esthetic  criticism  was 
only  possible  when  the  beauty  and  truth  of  these 
great  works  had  so  penetrated  and  enlightened  the 
Greek  mind  that  soundness  of  substance  and  per- 
fection of  form  were  recognized  as  the  tests  of  a 
genuine  work  of  art.  The  laws  of  art  have  always 
been  discovered  by  the  process  of  induction ;  no  race 
has  ever  thought  much  about  art  in  the  abstract 
until  it  has  been  educated  by  contact  with  works 
which,  by  their  revelation  to  the  eye,  have  made  the 
mind  conscious  of  its  own  affinity  with  the  ideals  of 
beauty.  The  discovery  of  the  same  laws  in  the  works 
of  literature  has  followed  a  similar  order.  The  lyric 
must  sing  in  the  hearts  of  men  before  the  secret  of 
its  form  is  discerned  and  disclosed ;  the  drama  must 
unfold  the  iron  creed  of  fate,  or  the  indissoluble 
union  of  character  and  destiny,  before  the  laws 
which  shape  it  are  announced.  Esthetic  criticism 
follows,  therefore,  those  productive  periods  which,  by 
enlargement  and  enrichment  of  the  scope  of  actual 
achievement,  disclose  new  sources  of  power,  larger 
sweep  of  ideas,  different  or  higher  possibilities  of 
execution.  When  Euripides  completed  his  work,  the 
Greek  had  all  the  materials  for  an  intelligent,  if  still 
incomplete,  study  of  the  drama  at  hand ;  ^Eschylus, 
Sophocles,  and  Euripides  had  wrought  with  such 
power  on  so  great  a  scale  that  they  had  made  clear 


54      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  construction  and  the  peculiar  force  and  signifi- 
cance of  the  noble  literary  form  which  they  fashioned. 
There  was  no  need,  for  the  purposes  of  aesthetic 
criticism,  to  hold  judgment  in  suspense  until  Lessing, 
Corneille,  Calderon,  and  Shakespeare  had  spoken. 
Aristotle  was  amply  justified  by  the  scope  and 
splendour  of  the  drama  of  his  own  race  in  declaring 
the  purpose  of  all  dramatic  representation.  But  as  a 
disclosure  of  the  full  possibilities  of  the  drama  as  an 
instrument  of  human  expression,  even  the  Attic  stage 
was  incomplete ;  other  races  must  endure  and  suffer 
and  translate  experience  into  art,  before  the  full  com- 
pass of  this  magnificent  literary  form  could  be  under- 
stood. And  when  the  drama  has  been  brought  as 
near  perfection  as  the  genius  of  man  can  carry  it, 
there  are  still  other  elements  which  must  enter  into  a 
final  and  adequate  comprehension  of  its  significance. 
It  must  be  studied  in  the  light  of  a  complete  literary 
development ;  it  must  find  its  place  in  the  large 
movement  of  history.  To  a  real  mastery  of  the 
drama  as  a  form  of  art  and  an  expression  of  experi- 
ence, there  is  necessary,  therefore,  its  full  development 
under  many  diverse  conditions  and  at  many  hands, 
familiarity  with  literature  in  all  its  forms,  and  clear 
perception  of  the  historic  life  behind  the  work  of  art. 
And  what  is  true  of  the  drama  is  also  true  of  the  epic, 
the  lyric,  the  ballad,  the  novel,  —  in  a  word,  of 
literature  as  a  whole. 

The   conditions   which   make   possible   this   com- 
prehensive study  of  literature  as  an  art,  and  as  an 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        55 

expression  of  human  life,  have  not  existed  until 
within  comparatively  recent  times.  There  are 
glimpses  here  and  there  in  the  works  of  the  greatest 
minds  of  the  unity  of  knowledge,  glimpses  of  the 
range  and  significance  of  literature  as  the  vital  out- 
come of  all  human  experience ;  but  the  clear  percep- 
tion of  these  truths  has  been  possible  only  to  modern 
men.  It  is  one  thing  to  glance  at  a  great  truth  in  the 
swift  vision  of  prophecy ;  it  is  a  very  different  thing 
to  discern  it  as  the  result  of  deliberate  searching,  and 
to  hold  it  within  the  field  until  it  is  clearly  under- 
stood in  its  import  and  large  relations.  So  long  as 
knowledge  and  art  were  abstractly  conceived,  — 
thought  of  as  existing  apart  and  isolated  from  human 
development,  —  there  could  be  no  conception  of 
their  harmony  and  interdependence,  of  their  vital 
relation  to  the  development  of  men  as  individuals 
and  as  a  society.  It  was  reserved  for  the  Germans  of 
the  last  century  to  comprehend  and  formulate  that 
idea  of  the  unity  and  vital  interdependence  of  all 
the  forms  and  forces  of  civilization  which  lies  at  the 
foundation  of  all  our  modern  thinking;  which  has, 
indeed,  transformed  and  reconstructed  all  knowledge. 
What  the  Humanists  did  in  a  partial  and  provi- 
sional way  toward  a  true  and  real  insight  into  the  an- 
tique world,  the  great  German  critics  of  the  last  cen- 
tury—  Winckelmann,  Herder,  Lessing,  and  Goethe 
—  did  fundamentally  and  permanently,  not  only 
for  classical  art  and  life,  but  for  all  knowledge 
and  history.     The  Humanists  destroyed  the  mediae- 


56       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

val  tradition  of  Virgil,  and  brought  back  the  living 
man;  brushed  aside  the  cobwebs  with  which  cen- 
turies of  monkish  teaching  had  obscured  the  great 
poem,  and  made  clear  once  more  its  human  tender- 
ness and  beauty.  The  German  thinkers  destroyed 
the  abstract  idea  of  knowledge  which  divided  it  into 
separate  departments,  isolated  from  each  other  and 
detached  from  the  living  experience  of  men,  —  the 
formal,  academic  idea  of  art  as  a  set  of  rules,  a  fixed 
and  conventional  practice  unrelated  to  national  char- 
acter. Rejecting  the  dry  and  arbitrary  definitions 
and  abstractions  of  his  time,  Winckelmann  discovered 
the  totality  of  Greek  life,  and  saw  what  his  predeces- 
sors had  failed  to  see,  —  that  simplicity,  elevation,  and 
repose  were  the  common  qualities  of  the  dramas  of 
Sophocles,  the  marbles  of  Phidias,  the  speculations 
of  Plato,  the  orations  of  Pericles;  that  literature, 
sculpture,  philosophy,  and  oratory  were,  therefore, 
the  vitally  related  parts  of  a  harmonious  and  com- 
plete expression  of  Greek  life  ;  and  that  the  common 
root  whence  all  these  exquisite  flowers  drew  their 
loveliness  was  the  Greek  nature.  Many  of  the  mar- 
bles in  the  Vatican  were  recovered  as  part  of  the 
great  work  of  the  Renaissance,  but  they  were  first 
really  seen  by  Winckelmann  and  his  contemporaries. 
He  discerned  the  noble  idealism  shared  alike  by 
Plato  and  the  sculptors  of  the  Periclean  age,  —  that 
idealism  which  found  in  the  Greek  mind  so  congenial 
a  soil,  and  in  the  Greek  hand  and  the  Greek  speech 
such  sure  and  marvellous  interpreters.     Winckelmann 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.       57 

"  first  unveiled  the  ideal  beauty  of  Greek  antiquity," 
and  disclosed  those  qualities  of  Greek  art  which  make 
it  one  in  all  its  splendid  forms ;  so  that  whether  we 
study  the  trilogy  of  Agamemnon,  the  structure  of  the 
Parthenon,  the  statesmanship  of  Pericles,  or  the 
"  Phaedrus,"  we  are  conscious  of  but  a  single  creative 
personality.  In  its  magical  beauty  each  work  re- 
mains a  perpetual  type ;  but  the  genius  of  the  lamp 
by  which  these  wonders  were  wrought  was  one.  Be- 
hind all  these  beautiful  masks  there  was  a  single 
face.  Winckelmann  saw  that  art  had  a  natural  history 
of  its  own,  and  that  its  birth,  its  successive  stages  of 
growth,  its  decay  and  death,  could  be  clearly  traced ; 
he  saw  that  religion,  political  development,  race, 
climate,  soil,  character,  furnished  the  conditions  of 
its  life.  He  perceived,  in  a  word,  the  unity  of  Greek 
life  and  history,  the  organic  and  historic  development 
of  Greek  art.  For  an  abstract  idea,  he  substituted 
a  living  organism ;  for  a  conventional  system,  a  vital 
process ;  for  an  isolated  skill,  the  splendid  expression 
of  the  deepest  human  experience  and  the  loftiest 
human  ideals. 

By  very  different  methods,  and  with  a  very  differenV. 
mind,  but  in  the  same  vital  spirit,  Herder  approached 
the  study  of  literature.  French  influence  was  still 
dominant  in  Germany,  where  the  absolutism  of  Fred- 
erick in  the  State  was  reproduced  in  letters  in  the 
tyranny  of  artificial  tastes,  conventional  models,  and 
a  dead  formality  alien  to  the  German  mind  and 
powerless  to  touch   the   German    heart.      Boileau's 


58       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

"Art  Po6tique  "  was  the  final  word  concerning  litera- 
ture ;  while  the  sovereignty  of  fact  and  the  supremacy 
of  common-sense,  incarnated  in  the  "  Encyclopaedia," 
barred  out  the  visions  of  the  imagination  and  the 
insight  of  intuition.  In  this  formal  world,  from  which 
all  natural,  primary  impulses  were  shut  out,  Herder 
appeared,  fresh  from  contact  with  the  living  sources  of 
literature.  He  was  saturated  with  the  poetry  of  the 
Bible  j  he  had  drunk  deep  at  the  springs  of  Homer, 
Shakespeare,  and  the  English  ballads.  He  was  under 
the  spell  of  the  freshest  and  most  creative  spirit  ever 
expressed  in  literature,  —  a  spirit  instinctively  artistic  in 
every  expression  of  itself,  and  yet  without  a  touch  of 
self-consciousness.  Nowhere  has  the  soul  of  man 
spoken  with  such  perfect  simplicity  and  sincerity, 
and  consequently  with  such  sublime  eloquence,  as  in 
the  pages  of  the  Bible,  of  Homer,  and  of  Shakespeare. 
Herder  exchanged  the  old-fashioned  French  garden, 
with  its  deformed  trees  and  intrusive  orderliness,  for 
the  bloom  of  the  open  field.  Literature  was  no  arti- 
ficial product  to  him ;  it  was  a  natural  growth ;  its 
roots  were  in  the  heart  of  man ;  it  was  the  voice  of 
man's  need  and  sufferings  and  hopes.  From  the 
conventional  ideas  and  standards  of  his  time  he 
turned  to  the  profound  conception  of  literature  as  a 
growth,  an  unforced  and  authoritative  utterance  of 
the  soul.  He  returned  to  Nature,  in  the  well-worn 
phrase ;  to  Nature  as  he  found  it  in  primitive  ages, 
and  in  men  whose  simplicity  and  sincerity  were  still 
untouched  by  conventionalism.     "  Poetry   in    those 


SIGNIFICANCE   OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.       59 

happy  days,"  he  declared,  "  lived  in  the  ears  of  the 
people,  on  the  lips  and  in  the  harps  of  living  bards ; 
it  sang  of  history,  of  the  events  of  the  day,  of  mys- 
teries, miracles,  and  signs.  It  was  the  flower  of  a 
nation's  character,  language,  and  country,  of  its  oc- 
cupations, its  prejudices,  its  passions,  its  aspirations, 
and  its  soul."  The  epic  was  to  Herder  "  the  living 
history  of  the  people ;  "  the  Lied,  or  song,  was  not  a 
poem  of  the  study  and  the  salon;  it  was  a  natural 
melody  out  of  the  heart  of  a  passion  or  sentiment. 
The  fable  was  not  a  calculated  setting  of  moral  truth 
in  story  form ;  it  was  "  the  poetical  illustration  of  a 
lesson  of  experience  by  means  of  a  characteristic 
trait,  drawn  from  animal  life,  and  developed  by  anal- 
ogy." "Analogy  is  the  parent  of  poetry  in  fables, 
not  abstraction,  still  less  a  dry  deduction  from  the 
general  to  the  particular."  Herder  opposed  to  the 
mechanical  conception  of  literature,  then  almost  uni- 
versally held,  the  vital  conception ;  he  recognized 
the  distinctive  quality  of  genius,  because  he  empha- 
sized the  spontaneous  element  in  all  great  poetry ; 
he  discerned  the  parallelism  between  literary  and 
historical  development.  The  significant  word  with 
him  was  growth ;  because  growth  implies  natural 
process  as  opposed  to  mechanical  process,  spontane- 
ous impulse  as  opposed  to  conscious  action,  genius 
as  opposed  to  artifice,  the  individual  soul  as  opposed 
to  abstract  ideas.  Goethe  expressed  Herder's  funda- 
mental idea  when  he  said :  "  Everything  that  man 
undertakes  to  produce,  whether  by  action,  word,  or 


60       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

in  whatsoever  way,  ought  to  spring  from  the  union  of 
all  his  faculties."  It  is  this  deep,  unconscious  ex- 
pression of  the  totality  of  man's  experience  and 
nature  which  pervades  the  greatest  works  of  litera- 
ture, and  makes  them  the  most  authoritative  works 
of  history  we  possess.  They  record  the  progress  of  that 
education  of  the  soul  for  which  the  world  stands. 

Herder  performed  for  literature  the  service  which 
Winckelmann  performed  for  antique  art :  he  dis- 
covered its  natural  history,  and  set  it  in  normal 
relations  with  the  totality  of  human  thought  and 
achievement.  And  what  he  had  done  for  literature 
he  did  also  for  history.  He  substituted  a  natural  and 
vital  for  an  artificial  and  mechanical  conception.  He 
grasped  the  great  idea  of  development,  so  familiar  to 
us,  and  so  fruitful  of  fresher  and  deeper  views  of 
things.  "  Up  to  this  time,"  says  a  German  writer, 
reported  by  Hillebrand,  from  whom  these  quotations 
are  made,  "the  most  mechanical  teleology  had 
reigned  in  the  philosophy  of  history.  Providence 
was  represented  to  have  created  cork-trees  that  men 
should  have  wherewith  to  stop  their  bottles."  Herder 
saw  that  the  laws  which  govern  the  life  of  men  in  the 
world  are  written  in  the  very  constitution  of  the  soul, 
and  are  not  arbitrary  regulations  impressed  from 
without ;  that  history  records  the  unfolding  of  germs 
and  forces  which  were  within  the  soul  at  the  begin- 
ning, not  a  series  of  interferences  and  interruptions ; 
and  that  these  germs  are  developed  under  conditions 
fixed  by  law,  and  part,  therefore,  of  the  very  structure 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.       6 1 

of  Nature.  "  The  God  I  look  for  in  history,"  he  said, 
"  must  be  the  same  as  the  God  of  Nature,  —  for  man  is 
but  a  tiny  particle  of  the  whole,  and  the  history  of 
mankind  resembles  that  of  the  worm,  closely  con- 
nected with  the  tissue  it  inhabits;  therefore  the 
natural  laws  by  which  the  Deity  reveals  itself  must 
reign  in  man  likewise.  .  .  .  The  whole  history  of 
humanity  is  pure,  natural  history  of  human  forces, 
actions,  and  instincts,  according  to  time  and  place." 
If  Herder  meant  in  these  words  to  shut  out  the 
constant  inflow  of  spiritual  influences  into  human 
history,  we  might  well  part  company  with  him ;  but 
the  emphasis  of  his  statement  and  its  deep  signifi- 
cance are  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  he  vitalized 
history  as  he  had  vitalized  literature,  by  putting  a 
natural  process  of  growth  in  the  place  of  a  mechanical 
process,  thus  making  history  a  living  expression  of 
the  character  of  man,  —  a  continuous  revelation  of 
the  laws  and  forces  of  life. 

Those  only  who  understand  how  widespread  and 
deep-rooted  were  mechanical  and  arbitrary  ideas  in 
the  last  century  can  understand  how  tremendous  a 
revolution  was  implicit  in  the  changes  of  thought  thus 
rapidly  sketched,  —  a  revolution  which  has  affected 
every  department  of  knowledge,  and  has  reorganized 
it  along  new  and  deeper  lines.  Carlyle  once  said  to 
Bayard  Taylor  that  Goethe  had  been  his  saviour. 
There  was  a  characteristic  exaggeration  in  the  state- 
ment ;  but  it  had  this  truth  at  the  bottom,  that  at  a 
time  when  the  young  Scotch  thinker  found  himself 


62       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

forced  to  part  company  with  the  narrow  and  arid 
conception  of  life  and  humanity  as  vitiated  by 
corruption,  and  not  only  entirely  untrustworthy,  but 
dissevered  and  broken  into  fragments,  the  buoyant 
naturalism  of  Goethe,  affirming  the  divine  origin 
and  destiny  of  all  created  things,  the  soundness  and 
healthfulness  of  Nature  and  man,  the  unity  and 
dignity  of  history  and  knowledge,  and  consequently 
the  authority  of  history,  literature,  and  art  as  a 
revelation  of  both  human  and  divine,  put  solid  ground 
under  him,  and  gave  him  a  rational  and  harmonious 
view  of  things,  —  a  view  which  included  and  made 
room  for  every  form  of  human  activity.  It  is  very 
interesting  to  the  reader  of  Goethe  to-day  to  discover 
how  generally  the  intellectual  movement  of  this 
century  is  reflected  in  his  pages,  and  how  profoundly 
sympathetic  his  mind  was  with  the  broad  and,  within 
certain  limits,  healthy  and  fruitful  naturalism  which 
pervades  contemporary  thought.  The  nature  of  man 
was  to  Goethe  the  one  authoritative  and  authentic 
revelation,  and  he  refused  to  reject  any  part  of  that 
revelation.  History,  literature,  art,  religion,  —  these 
all  expressed  what  man  has  been  and  has  become  by 
virtue  of  the  evolution  of  his  personality  under  the 
established  conditions  of  life.  The  natural  history  of 
man  is  written  in  his  works,  and  together  they  form 
the  trustworthy  record  and  disclosure  of  his  nature. 
It  will  be  seen  from  this  brief  statement  that 
Winckelmann,  Herder,  and  Goethe  held  certain  fun- 
damental ideas  in  common,  and  these  ideas  will  be 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        63 

found  to  be  fundamental  in  modern  criticism.  The 
perception  of  the  truth  that  literature  is,  in  large  meas- 
ure, conditioned  on  the  development,  the  surround- 
ings, and  the  character  of  the  men  who  create  it ; 
that  the  vast  and  varied  movement  of  humanity  re- 
corded in  history  is  a  development,  a  progressive 
unfolding,  a  coherent  expression  of  man's  nature ; 
and  that  literature,  as  a  part  of  this  vast  movement, 
represents  a  growth,  a  vital  process,  and  is,  there- 
fore, a  part  of  the  discovery  of  himself  which  man  is 
making  as  his  supreme  achievement  in  life,  —  these 
are  the  informing  ideas  of  the  modern  critical  move- 
ment. The  epoch  of  purely  textual  criticism  has  long 
passed  away ;  that  work  has  been  transferred  mainly, 
if  not  entirely,  to  the  scholars.  ^Esthetic  criticism, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  been  immensely  enriched  and 
stimulated  by  the  application  to  literature  of  the  ideas 
which  have  been  set  forth;  never  in  the  history  of 
letters  has  there  been  so  much  criticism  of  the  highest 
order  as  during  the  present  century.  When  it  was 
seen  that  no  literary  work  is  detached  from  the  totality 
of  human  achievement ;  that  no  work  represents  in- 
dividual gift,  skill,  or  experience  alone ;  that  in  every 
real  book  humanity  speaks  out  of  and  to  its  own  heart, 
—  the  feeling  toward  literature  was  immensely  deep- 
ened and  freshened.  Esthetic  criticism  formerly 
concerned  itself  entirely  with  the  fidelity  of  a  work  to 
standards  already  set  up  by  the  creations  of  acknowl- 
edged masters ;  this  was  the  kind  of  criticism  which 
was  practised  in  England  and  on  the  continent  at 


64       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  close  of  the  last  and  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century.  It  was  assumed  that  the  last  word  had  been 
spoken  concerning  the  art  of  writing ;  that  the  final 
canons  had  been  announced,  and  the  final  standards 
and  models  given  to  the  world.  A  new  work  must 
conform  to  these  standards  or  suffer  condemnation ; 
lack  of  conformity  meant  lack  of  art.  Now,  the  very 
idea  of  literature  as  a  growth,  as  an  expression  of  the 
continually  unfolding  life  of  man,  involves  not  only 
the  possibility,  but  the  certainty,  of  change  and  ex- 
pansion. New  forms  of  expression  must  be  born  with 
the  new  thoughts  and  experiences  which  they  are  to 
clothe.  The  permanent  element  in  literature  is  not 
form,  but  spirit ;  not  a  particular  manner,  but  perfec- 
tion of  manner;  not  uniformity  of  execution,  but 
endless  variety,  stamped  always  with  supreme  excel- 
lence. There  are  flawless  models,  but  they  are  for 
inspiration,  not  for  imitation  j  they  fix  the  standard 
of  quality,  but  they  liberate  the  hand  which  they 
inspire. 

This  was  perhaps  the  first  great  change  effected  by 
the  modern  way  of  looking  at  literature ;  and  the  extent 
and  significance  of  that  change  can  be  seen  by  com- 
paring the  criticism  of  Voltaire  with  that  of  Sainte- 
Beuve ;  the  criticism  of  Dr.  Johnson  with  that  of 
Matthew  Arnold.  The  older  view  of  literature  in- 
volved the  idea  of  a  fixed  and  formal  set  of  laws  con- 
stituting an  art;  the  later  view  involves  the  growth 
of  literature  with  the  growth  of  man,  the  essential 
element  being,  not  conformity  to  a  rigid  order  of  form, 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.       65 

but  soundness  and  veracity  of  thought,  and  beauty 
and  flexibility  of  expression.  Dr.  Johnson  could 
understand  Dryden  because  Dryden  was  a  conformist, 
in  letter  if  not  in  spirit ;  but  Shakespeare  belonged 
to  another  order,  and  demanded  a  breadth  and  catho- 
licity which  Dr.  Johnson  could  not  bring  to  his  magical 
pages.  Mr.  Arnold,  on  the  other  hand,  can  perceive 
the  literary  quality  shared  in  common  by  men  as 
diverse  as  Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  as  Byron  and 
Tolstoi.  The  criticism  represented  by  Mr.  Arnold, 
even  when  it  limits  itself  to  aesthetic  quality  alone,  is 
informed  with  modern  ideas ;  with  the  ideas  which 
Herder  and  his  contemporaries  were  the  first  to  see 
clearly  and  to  apply  profoundly.  No  man  studies  a 
star  as  a  solitary  world ;  though  he  shut  all  other  stars 
out  of  the  field  of  observation,  the  heavens  still  move 
about  the  shining  point  which  he  has  isolated.  A 
modern  critic  approaches  a  work  of  literature  with 
certain  ideas  which  are  a  part  of  his  intellectual  life,. 
He  cannot,  if  he  would,  detach  a  writer  from  his  age, 
his  race,  humanity :  all  these  are  present  in  every 
study  which  he  makes ;  they  are  involved  in  every 
conclusion  which  he  reaches;  they  contribute  to 
every  judgment  which  he  pronounces. 

The  older  criticism,  the  criticism  based  on  stand- 
ards which  were  supposed  to  be  exact  and  final, 
must  in  the  nature  of  things  have  continued  to  be  a 
derivative  and  secondary  growth,  — a  body  of  writing 
related  to  the  original  work  of  which  it  treated,  very 
much  as  the  parasite  is  related  to  the  trunk  from 
5 


66       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

which  it  draws  its  life.  But  for  the  development  of 
the  ideas  which  have  been  emphasized,  criticism  as 
we  know  it  could  never  have  been.  For  when  we 
study  this  criticism  as  a  whole,  we  become  aware 
that  it  is  original  and  not  secondary  work ;  and  that 
criticism  as  a  literary  form  has  as  deep  a  root,  and 
is  as  clearly  related  to  human  growth  and  experience 
as  the  epic,  the  drama,  or  any  other  form  of  distinc- 
tively creative  work.  The  extent  to  which  this  form 
has  been  used  by  men  of  literary  genius  of  late  years, 
and  the  perfection  to  which  it  has  been  brought,  in- 
dicate clearly  that  there  is  behind  it  a  primary  im- 
pulse, —  an  impulse  which  seeks  it  as  something 
normal,  adequate,  and  akin  to  the  spirit  and  thought 
of  the  day.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  great  place 
in  contemporary  literature  occupied  by  criticism  is 
evidence  of  the  decline  of  the  creative  impulse,  and 
that  the  originative  forces  are  evidently  spent.  This 
class  of  comment  is  familiar  to  all  students  of  litera- 
ture, who  have  read  again  and  again  the  announce- 
ment of  a  similar  decay  of  art  because  some  new  form 
of  expression  had  begun  to  press  hard  upon  the  old 
in  importance  and  influence.  The  literary  instinct, 
like  every  kind  of  artistic  instinct,  is  characterized  by 
the  greatest  sensitivism ;  men  select  forms  of  expres- 
sion rarely  as  the  result  of  deliberation;  the  form 
comes  generally  with  the  message  which  it  is  to  con- 
tain, or  the  significant  fact  which  it  is  to  express.  If 
a  literary  form  attracts  a  great  number  of  fine  minds 
at  a  given  time,  this  fact  of  itself  raises  the  presump- 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        67 

tion  that  the  attractive  power  lies  in  some  deep  and 
real  affinity  between  this  particular  form  and  the  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  conditions  of  the  time.  With- 
out consideration  of  the  contents  of  modern  criticism, 
the  fact  that  so  many  minds  of  the  highest  class  have 
made  it  their  chief  means  of  self-expression  ought  to 
put  us  on  guard  against  any  conclusion  involving  its 
rank  as  an  original  contribution  to  literature.  That 
men  of  the  order  of  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Sainte-Beuve, 
and  Arnold  have  chosen  criticism  as  the  method  of 
expression  best  fitted  to  convey  their  convictions  and 
conclusions  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  those  who  regard 
it  as  a  secondary  form,  and  refuse  to  recognize  it  as 
original  and  first-hand  work.  Not  exhaustion  of 
creative  impulse,  but  change  of  direction,  is  indicated 
by  the  attractiveness  of  criticism  to  modern  minds ; 
not  a  decline  of  force,  but  the  application  of  force 
through  a  new  instrument. 

The  scientific  spirit  has  invaded  literature  to  the 
extent  of  emphasizing  the  importance  of  a  clear  com- 
prehension of  all  the  elements  that  enter  into  a  work 
of  literary  art  so  far  as  they  are  discoverable.  The 
secret  of  the  splendid  vitality  of  the  Odyssey  eludes 
all  search  ;  but  we  recognize  it  the  more  clearly  now 
that  we  have  learned  so  much  about  the  Greek  life 
and  character  out  of  which  it  issued  and  in  which  it 
was  embosomed.  But  this  spirit,  in  its  devotion  to 
reality  and  its  instinct  for  getting  to  the  bottom  of 
things,  could  not  rest  in  any  isolated  study  of  literary 
works ;  it  must  study  literature  as  a  whole,  determine 


68       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

its  rank  and  place,  and  interpret  its  significance  in 
the  totality  of  human  development.  It  is  in  the  body 
of  modern  critical  writing  that  we  discover  the  re- 
sponse of  the  literary  mind  to  the  methods  and  spirit 
of  science.  The  absorbing  search  of  science  is  for 
the  fact,  and  the  law  behind  the  fact;  it  fashions 
nothing ;  it  waits  with  infinite  patience  on  discovery. 
Now,  the  end  of  criticism  is,  to  this  extent,  identical 
with  the  end  of  science ;  it  is  to  discover  and  lay 
bare  the  fact,  and  the  law  behind  it.  Is  this  work 
true  to  the  fact,  the  law  ?  is  its  first  question ;  and  the 
answer  involves  a  clear  discernment  of  the  truth  of 
idea  or  experience  which  the  writer  has  sought  to 
represent  under  the  form  of  art,  and  also  a  clear  per- 
ception of  the  law  of  beauty  to  which  it  must  conform 
if  it  contain  the  indefinable  quality  of  art.  Thus,  as 
its  most  immediate  and  direct  result,  criticism  dis- 
covers the  presence  or  absence  of  soundness  of  sub- 
stance and  perfection  of  form. 

But  there  is  another  and  more  comprehensive  ques- 
tion which  criticism  asks.  The  work  which  it  studies 
must  conform  to  something,  but  it  must  also  reveal 
something;  it  must  disclose  a  certain  order  and 
beauty  of  workmanship,  but  it  must  also  discover  its 
connection  with  an  ultimate  order  to  which  every 
real  expression  of  man's  soul  bears  witness.  When 
Matthew  Arnold  defines  poetry  as  a  criticism  of  life, 
he  indicates  that  which  is  behind  all  literature,  whether 
in  verse  or  prose,  —  that  which  supplies  its  inspiration 
and  furnishes  its  unfailing  test.     What  is  soundness 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  MODERN  CRITICISM.        69 

of  substance  but  fidelity  to  the  fact  and  law  of  life  ? 
A  work  of  art  is  sound  only  when  it  is  true  to  nature 
and  experience ;  it  may  possess  the  very  highest 
beauty,  but  if,  like  some  of  Shelley's  longer  poems, 
it  lacks  reality,  truth  to  experience  or  to  ideals  which 
are  the  projection  of  experience,  we  are  compelled  to 
assign  it  a  lower  rank.  It  is  defective  in  that  quality 
which  is,  so  far  as  substance  is  concerned,  the  supreme 
quality  of  the  really  great  work  of  art.  And  what  is 
perfection  of  form  but  fidelity  to  those  laws  of  art 
never  put  on  tables  of  stone,  but  indelibly  written  in 
the  soul  by  the  hand  whose  vast  creation  follows  ever 
the  line  of  beauty  ?  The  fact  and  the  law  of  life  and 
art,  —  these  are  the  realities  for  which  criticism,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  is  always  searching.  These 
form  what  Fichte  called  "  the  divine  idea  of  the  world," 
which  "  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  appearance."  Herder, 
Goethe,  Hildebrand,  and  Grimm ;  Sainte-Beuve  and 
Scherer;  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Arnold,  Dowden,  and 
Hutton ;  Emerson  and  Lowell,  —  the  great  company 
of  those  who  have  pursued  criticism  for  the  highest 
ends  have  each  and  all  disclosed  the  power  of  these 
ideas  upon  their  work.  They  have  fashioned  a  new 
form  of  literature,  and  one  perfectly  adapted  to  the 
intellectual  methods  and  tendencies  of  the  age,  —  a 
form  through  which  the  creative  impulse,  following 
the  scientific  method,  but  in  the  truest  literary  spirit, 
works  with  a  freedom  and  power  which  attest  the 
adaptation  of  the  instrument  to  the  task.  Perfection 
of  form  is  nowhere  more  perfectly  illustrated  than  in 


70       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  best  critical  writing,  in  which  the  more  imposing 
qualities  of  order,  proportion,  gradation,  are  combined 
with  marvellous  delicacy  of  touch,  refinement  of  charac- 
terization, subtilty  and  keenness  of  insight. 

Modern  criticism  has  given  us  a  new  conception  of 
literature.  Studying  comprehensively  the  vast  ma- 
terial which  has  come  to  its  hand,  discerning  clearly 
the  law  of  growth  behind  all  art,  and  the  interdepen- 
dence and  unity  of  all  human  development,  it  has 
given  us  an  interpretation  of  literature  which  is  noth- 
ing less  than  another  chapter  in  the  revelation  of  life. 
This  is  its  real  contribution  to  civilization ;  this  is  the 
achievement  which  stamps  it  as  creative  work.  The 
epic  described  adequately  and  nobly  the  stir  and 
movement  of  an  objective  age ;  the  drama  repre- 
sented the  relations  of  men  to  the  powers  above  them 
and  to  the  organized  social  and  moral  forces  about 
them ;  criticism,  in  the  hands  of  the  great  writers, 
discloses  the  law  and  the  fact  of  art  and  life  as  these 
final  realities  are  revealed  through  literature. 


THE   POETRY  OF   DANTE   GABRIEL 
ROSSETTI. 

The  real  importance  of  those  movements  in  litera- 
ture or  art  which  have  been  definite  enough  in  aim 
to  enlist  an  active  membership  of  gifted  persons 
and  to  formulate  something  like  a  creed,  is  to  be 
found,  as  a  rule,  not  in  the  creed,  but  in  the  fellow- 
ship. The  formulation  of  principles,  the  agreement 
upon  methods,  seem  at  the  moment  of  the  first  im- 
portance ;  but  time,  that  patient  corrector  of  inade- 
quate judgments  and  false  perspectives,  is  indifferent 
to  theories  of  art,  and  cares  only  for  the  work  which 
discovers  the  inspired  touch,  and  the  personality 
through  which  the  vision  of  truth  or  beauty  enters 
into  the  common  life  of  men.  Such  movements  are 
often  fruitful  of  great  works  and  great  souls,  and 
mark  great  expansions  of  thought;  but  the  specific 
creeds  which  they  profess,  like  creeds  of  every  sort, 
are  always  partial,  inadequate,  and  provisional.  That 
which  seemed  a  finality  to  the  men  who  were  under 
the  spell  of  its  fresh  and  thrilling  influence,  in  the 
end  falls  into  line  with  the  continuous  process  of 
development  of  which  it  was  part,  and  is  recognized 
as  a  new  and  fruitful  evolution  from  the  past. 


72       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

To  the  ardent  youths  who  crowded  the  Theatre 
Frangais  on  the  evening  of  Feb.  25,  1830,  "  Her- 
nani "  filled  the  entire  stage  of  the  world  and 
obliterated  the  drama  of  the  past ;  in  that  hour 
Romanticism  was  not  so  much  a  reaction  as  a  com- 
plete and  final  revolution  of  the  aims  and  principles 
of  dramatic  art.  To  many  of  the  Transcendentalists 
of  forty  years  ago  the  pure  and  highly  intellectual  im- 
pulse which  they  shared  prophesied  the  breaking  of 
the  last  seals,  and  the  imminent  disclosure  of  that 
cpen  secret  which  has  been  in  all  times  both  inspira- 
tion and  anguish  to  the  noblest  souls.  No  student 
of  literature  will  underestimate  the  value  of  those 
statements  of  principles,  vague  and  incomplete  as 
they  were,  which  grew  out  of  the  Romantic  and 
Transcendental  movements ;  but  the  real  significance 
of  Romanticism  and  Transcendentalism  is  to  be 
found  in  the  substantial  works  which  attest  to  the 
world  the  reality  of  the  impulse  which  inspired  them, 
and  in  which  the  main  drift  of  both  movements  is  to 
be  discovered.  Much  has  been  written  concerning 
Pre-Raphaelitism,  and  much  doubtless  remains  to  be 
said  touching  this  very  interesting  movement  which 
affected  English  art  so  strongly  forty  years  ago ;  but 
the  significance  and  value  of  the  impulse  which  strove 
with  only  partial  success  to  formulate  itself  in  the 
"  Germ  "  and,  later,  in  the  "  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
Magazine,"  is  to  be  found  in  the  works  of  three  or 
four  eminent  artists,  and  of  at  least  one  poet  of  rare 
quality  and  unique  personality.     We  are  chiefly  con- 


POETRY  OP  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.      73 

cerned  to  know  that  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement, 
like  every  other  great  movement  in  art  and  literature, 
was  not  so  much  the  outcome  of  a  new  doctrine,  a 
novel  creed,  as  a  new  attitude  toward  Nature  and 
life,  a  more  sincere  and  earnest  mood,  a  fresh  per- 
ception of  truth  and  beauty  through  individual  genius, 
a  deep  and  spontaneous  feeling  for  things  which  had 
come  to  be  treated  in  a  conventional  and  formal  way. 
The  significance  of  such  movements  lies  always  in 
the  fact  that  they  mark  fresh  contact  of  open  and 
aspiring  minds  with  Nature  and  life ;  and  when  this 
takes  place,  ferment,  agitation,  and  brilliant  activity 
inevitably  follow.  The  artists  and  poets  who  are 
associated  with  Pre-Raphaelitism  were  moved  by  a 
common  instinct  to  forsake  the  conventional  and 
academic  methods  of  the  day  and  study  Nature  for 
themselves;  this  was  the  wholesome  impulse  at  the 
heart  of  their  common  activity,  and  its  sincerity  and 
power  are  the  more  apparent  now  that  the  excessive 
individualism  and  morbid  intensity  of  much  of  its 
expression  have  become  things  of  the  past. 

It  would  be  interesting  as  matter  of  literary  history 
to  indicate  the  relations  of  this  movement  to  the 
larger  movement  of  thought  and  life  which  set  its 
impress  on  the  literature  of  Europe  at  the  close  of 
the  last  and  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 
Herder  and  the  young  Goethe ;  Burns,  Byron,  Keats, 
Shelley,  Coleridge,  and  Wordsworth ;  Hugo  and  Gau- 
tier,  —  are  names  which  seem  to  suggest  differences 
rather  than  agreement ;  but  it  would  not  be  difficult 


74       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

to  discover  certain  near  and  close  ties  between  them. 
More  evident  and  readily  discoverable  is  the  relation- 
ship of  Pre-Raphaelitism  with  Romanticism ;  with  the 
Oxford  movement  which  expressed  itself  from  the 
pulpit  of  St.  Mary's  Church  in  those  subtile  and 
searching  sermons  which  made  the  world  aware  that 
in  John  Henry  Newman  a  man  of  distinctly  religious 
genius  had  appeared ;  and  with  that  notable  revival 
of  Gothic  forms  which  a  deepened  religious  feeling 
substituted  for  the  pseudo-classic  architecture  of  the 
preceding  century.  A  wonderfully  interesting  and 
significant  movement  of  thought  and  life  was  that 
which  associated  the  names  of  Newman  and  Keble, 
Hunt,  Millais,  and  Rossetti,  Pugin  and  Ruskin.  But 
this  is,  after  all,  mainly  matter  of  historical  interest ; 
the  real  message  which  these  men  had  to  deliver  to 
the  world  is  to  be  sought  not  so  much  in  their  state- 
ments of  faith,  which  were  largely  polemic,  as  in  the 
great  works  which  are  the  only  authentic  disclosures 
of  their  genius  and  bent.  The  men  themselves  had 
no  sooner  come  to  agreement  in  certain  specific 
matters  of  principle  or  method  than  they  began  im- 
mediately to  drift  apart ;  the  law  of  life  was  upon 
them ;  and  while  they  held  some  things  in  common, 
the  work  and  the  word  of  each  was  to  be  the  utter- 
ance of  individual  insight  and  experience. 

Of  the  seven  young  men  who  formed  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  Brotherhood  in  1848,  William  Holman 
Hunt,  John  Everett  Millais,  and  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti  achieved   distinction  as   painters ;   Thomas 


POETRY  OP  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       75 

Woolner  as  a  sculptor ;  William  M.  Rossetti  and  his 
famous  brother,  as  poets ;  while  James  Collinson  and 
Frederick  George  Stephens,  either  in  promise  or  per- 
formance, made  good  their  claim  to  this  illustrious 
companionship.  With  these  names  are  also  associ- 
ated others  which  the  world  will  not  care  to  forget : 
Madox  Brown,  the  painter  of  the  Manchester  frescos, 
William  Bell  Scott,  and  Christina  Rossetti.  To  this 
little  group  the  Rossetti  family  furnished  three  of  the 
most  active  and  original  minds ;  and  of  these  three, 
one  is  likely  to  remain  the  most  memorable  exponent 
of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement.  Of  Gabriel  Charles 
Dante  Rossetti,  who  changed  his  name  to  Dante  Ga- 
briel at  an  early  period  in  his  career,  much  might  be 
said  by  way  of  emphasizing  the  influential  element  of 
heredity.  In  blood,  as  his  brother  tells  us,  he  was 
three  fourths  Italian  and  one  fourth  English,  "  being 
on  the  father's  side  wholly  Italian  and  on  the  mother's 
side  half  Italian  and  half  English."  The  father  was 
a  scholar,  a  man  of  letters,  and  an  ardent  patriot 
long  before  the  days  of  the  successful  movement  for 
Italian  independence  and  nationality.  Exiled  after 
the  good  old  Bourbon  fashion,  Gabriele  Rossetti  came 
to  London  in  1824,  married  the  daughter  of  an 
English  mother  and  an  Italian  father,  —  the  latter  a 
teacher,  translator,  and  scholar  of  excellent  quality,  — 
became  Professor  of  Italian  in  King's  College,  and  a 
commentator  on  Dante  of  orthodox  depth  and  ob- 
scurity. To  this  fugitive  scholar  were  born  four 
children, — Maria  Francesca,   who    died    in    1876; 


76       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Dante  Gabriel;  William  Michael;  and  Christina 
Georgina.  A  group  so  variously  gifted  has  rarely 
gathered  round  any  fireside.  To  Maria  Francesca 
we  are  indebted  for  "A  Shadow  of  Dante,"  which 
so  eminent  a  student  of  the  great  Florentine  as  Mr. 
Lowell  has  declared  to  be  "  by  far  the  best  comment 
that  has  appeared  in  English."  William  Michael  is 
known  to  all  readers  of  current  English  verse  and 
criticism;  and  Christina  has  won  high  rank  as  a 
writer  of  lyrical  verse  of  marked  individual  quality. 

Dante  Gabriel  was  born  on  May  12,  1828,  into  an 
atmosphere  charged  with  high  and  intense  intellectual 
activity.  He  knew  the  story  of  "  Hamlet "  before 
most  children  know  the  alphabet,  and  at  five  years  of 
age  he  wrote  a  dramatic  poem  entitled  "The  Slave ;  " 
seven  years  later  he  composed  a  series  of  still  more 
ambitious  verses  which  bore  the  romantic  title  of  "  Sir 
Hugh  the  Heron,"  and  were  probably  suggested  by 
some  lines  in  the  first  canto  of  "  Marmion."  These 
verses  have  no  interest  save  as  they  indicate  the  pre- 
cocious activity  of  a  mind  which  began  its  conscious 
development  with  the  advantages  of  an  exceptional 
pre-natal  education.  In  1835  he  entered  King's 
College  school,  where  he  studied  Latin,  French,  and 
German ;  Italian  was  as  familiar  to  him  as  English. 
A  strong  desire  to  become  a  painter  led  to  a  change 
of  instruction  in  his  fourteenth  year;  and  leaving 
King's  College  school,  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
study  of  art.  From  the  Royal  Academy  Antique 
School  he  entered  the  studio  of  Madox  Brown,  and 


POETRY  OF  DANTE   GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       77 

made  the  acquaintance  of  the  daring  young  innova- 
tors who  formed  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood  in 
1848.  In  his  nineteenth  year  Dante  Gabriel  wrote 
the  first  verse  which  gave  unmistakable  evidence  of 
his  possession  of  poetic  genius.  In  this  year  he  pro- 
duced the  striking  lines  entitled  "  My  Sister's  Sleep," 
in  the  metre  with  which  "In  Memoriam"  was  to 
make  the  world  familiar  three  years  later;  and  the 
most  widely  known  of  all  his  poems,  "  The  Blessed 
Damosel ;  "  both  of  which  appeared  for  the  first  time 
in  the  "Germ"  in  1850.  Of  Rossetti's  art  work, 
begun  at  this  period  and  carried  on  to  the  close  of 
his  too  brief  career,  this  is  not  the  place  to  speak, 
even  if  it  were  within  the  power  of  the  writer  to 
characterize  and  describe  its  subtile  and  varied  beauty 
of  expression,  its  noble  substance  of  thought,  its 
splendour  and  depth  of  imaginative  force.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  that  the  two  sides  of  his  life  endeavour  are 
entirely  harmonious;  that  they  are  complementary 
expressions  of  a  genius  which  saw  things  as  a  whole 
with  a  glance  that  pierced  to  the  very  soul  of  beauty 
in  things  visible  and  in  a  vision  as  rapt  and  at  times 
as  ecstatic  as  was  ever  vouchsafed  to  mystic  or  saint. 
In  the  spring  of  i860,  after  a  long  engagement, 
Rossetti  married  Elizabeth  Eleanor  Siddal,  —  a  woman 
of  poetic  and  artistic  faculty,  of  exquisite  sensitiveness 
of  mind  and  nature,  and  whose  beautiful  face  will 
long  remain  a  possession  in  one  of  Rossetti's  most 
characteristic  works,  the  M  Beata  Beatrix."  The  com- 
pleteness and  happiness  of  this  fellowship  can  only  be 


78       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

inferred  from  the  crushing  and  lifelong  grief  which 
her  death,  early  in  1862,  brought  upon  Rossetti.  In 
the  darkness  of  that  sudden  and  awful  sorrow,  to 
quote  the  words  of  another,  the  poet  literally  buried 
his  wand,  and  committed  his  poems  to  the  grave  in 
which  his  wife  was  interred.  But  neither  genius  nor 
its  works  are  private  property,  and  the  time  came 
when  the  persuasions  of  his  friends  and  his  own  sense 
of  obligation  to  his  gifts  induced  Rossetti  to  consent 
to  the  disinterment  of  the  manuscripts;  and  in  1876 
his  first  volume  of  "Poems"  was  published,  —  the 
second  volume,  "  Ballads  and  Sonnets,"  appearing  in 
1 88 1.  But  the  hand  of  death  was  already  upon  him. 
Insomnia,  that  lurking  foe  in  sensitive  and  highly 
imaginative  temperaments,  had  already  greatly  re- 
duced his  working  power,  and  had  developed  a  morbid 
tendency  which  led  to  recurring  periods  of  depression 
and  to  prolonged  seclusion  from  the  society  of  all 
save  the  most  intimate  friends.  On  Easter  Sunday, 
April  9,  1882,  Rossetti  died. 

A  singularly  uneventful  life,  judged  by  that  shallowest 
of  conventional  standards  which  measures  the  depth 
and  breadth  of  man's  life  by  the  journeys  he  makes, 
and  the  things  which  befall  his  estate  !  Rossetti's 
life  was  intensive  rather  than  extensive ;  its  power 
and  affluence  lay  in  the  clearness  with  which  its  own 
aims  were  discerned,  and  the  quiet  persistence  with 
which  it  was  held  to  the  lines  of  its  own  development. 
Probably  no  modern  man  has  been,  in  one  sense,  so 
detached  from  the  world  of  his  time,  and  so  consist- 


POETRY  OF  DANTE   GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       79 

ently  true  to  an  ideal  which  was  the  projection  of 
his  own  soul.  That  ideal  is  clearly  disclosed  in  the 
two  arts  which  served  Rossetti  as  interpreters  with 
almost  equal  fidelity  and  power.  No  man  has  left  a 
more  distinct  record  of  his  temperament  and  genius, 
and  there  are  few  such  records  which  put  one  under 
a  spell  more  potent,  or  which  lead  one  on  to  the 
heart  of  a  more  enthralling  ideal.  A  man  so  sensitive 
and  intense  in  his  imaginative  faculty  will  not  fall 
under  the  influence  of  a  multitude  of  antagonistic 
teachers ;  he  will  respond  only  to  those  with  whom 
his  own  nature  has  some  spiritual  kinship.  One  is 
not  surprised  to  find,  therefore,  that  Rossetti  early  dis- 
covered strongly  marked  intellectual  affinities,  which 
lie  so  directly  along  the  lines  of  his  own  temperament 
that,  after  studying  his  work,  one  could  safely  venture 
to  name  them.  Shakespeare,  Byron,  Shelley,  Cole- 
ridge, Keats,  and  Tennyson  are  the  natural  teachers 
of  such  a  boyhood  and  youth  as  Rossetti's ;  and  later 
one  may  count  with  assurance  upon  the  peculiar  and 
potent  influence  of  Blake  and  Browning.  There  is 
one  other  name  with  which  the  name  of  Rossetti  will 
be  associated  as  long  as  it  carries  any  power  of 
association  with  it.  Over  the  household  of  the  exiled 
Italian  scholar  the  memory  of  Dante  continually 
hovered  like  the  presence  of  the  genius  of  a  race. 
The  great  Florentine  was  not  a  tradition,  the  shadow 
of  a  mighty  past,  to  the  childhood  of  the  poet ;  he 
was  a  continual  and  pervasive  influence,  penetrating 
his  inmost  life  in  its  formative  period,  and  leaving  in 


So       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  mind  an  image  as  clear  and  familiar  as  it  was 
inspiring.  Rossetti's  personality  was  too  strong  and 
well  defined  to  yield  itself  even  into  hands  so  puissant 
as  those  of  Dante ;  but  between  the  two  there  was  a 
spiritual  as  well  as  a  race  kinship,  and  the  poet  of  the 
"  Divine  Comedy  "  has  had  no  truer  interpreter  than 
the  translator  of  the  "Vita  Nuova"  and  the  poet  of 
"  The  House  of  Life." 

Rossetti  was  extremely  fond  of  the  old  English  and 
Scotch  ballad  literature.  For  the  Italian  poets  as  a 
whole  he  cared  little ;  among  modern  writers  of 
French  verse  he  was  drawn  only  to  Hugo  and  De 
Musset ;  his  admiration  for  Villon  one  could  safely 
have  predicted.  He  had  little  in  common  with  the 
Germans,  whose  names  were  on  all  lips  in  the  time  of 
his  early  manhood,  although  one  cannot  help  think- 
ing that  if  he  had  carried  his  study  of  the  language 
further,  he  would  have  been  strongly  moved  by  many 
of  the  German  ballads,  and  that  at  least  one  episode 
in  "  Faust "  would  have  touched  him  closely.  Fitz- 
gerald's masterly  version  of  Calderon  interested  him 
greatly  during  the  later  years  of  his  life.  For  Teu- 
tonic and  Scandinavian  myth  and  poetry  he  had  no 
affinity,  and  he  was  entirely  free  from  that  curiosity 
concerning  Oriental  thought  and  belief  which  of  late 
has  taken  possession  of  so  many  minds,  both  great 
and  small.  He  had  none  of  that  unfruitful  and 
essentially  unintellectual  curiosity  which  leads  people 
to  ransack  all  literatures  and  philosophies,  not  in  the 
spirit  of  eager  search  for  principles,  but  from  a  desire 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       8 1 

to  discover  some  new  thing,  —  a  desire  especially  to 
come  upon  some  esoteric  knowledge,  and  thus,  by  a 
single  brilliant  advance,  possess  themselves  of  the 
secret  of  the  universe.  Rossetti  did  not  make  the 
mistake  of  thinking  that  truth  is  something  which  can 
.  be  found  by  searching;  he  understood  that  knowl- 
edge becomes  truth  only  as  we  grow  into  it  and  make 
it  ours  by  vital  assimilation.  Deaf  to  all  solicitations 
of  passion  or  pleasure,  unresponsive  to  the  intellectual 
curiosity  of  his  time,  he  took  his  own  way  through 
life,  made  fellowship  with  those  who  shared  with  him 
the  passion  for  the  ideal,  and  gave  his  work  the 
impress  of  a  singular  and  highly  individual  consist- 
ency of  conception  and  mood. 

Two  volumes  of  moderate  size  contain  the  complete 
work  of  Rossetti  in  poetry,  and  one  of  these  is  made 
up  of  translations.  It  is  the  quality  rather  than  the 
quantity  of  the  work  which  gives  it  claim  to  consider- 
ation. We  could  ill  afford  to  lose  any  of  the  Shake- 
spearian dramas  or  of  the  longer  poems  of  Tennyson 
or  Browning ;  these  poets  survey  and  interpret  so  wide 
a  field  of  thought  that  the  complete  expression  of  the 
genius  of  either  would  suffer  mutilation  by  suppression 
or  loss.  But  Rossetti  was  not  in  touch  with  the  wide 
movement  of  life ;  he  was  absorbed  in  a  single  pur- 
suit, and  enthralled  by  a  single  ideal;  within  com- 
paratively narrow  limits  he  has  given  us  a  complete 
picture  of  the  vision  that  was  reflected  in  the  depths 
of  his  soul.  The  volume  of  translations,  "  Dante  and 
His  Circle,"  attests  not  only  his  great  familiarity  with 
6 


82       ESS  A  YS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  early  Italian  poets,  but  also  his  extraordinary 
mastery  of  difficult  metrical  forms.  In  his  own  verse 
Rossetti  used  few  forms,  but  they  were  among  the 
most  expressive  and  exacting ;  in  his  translations  he 
showed  himself  master  of  the  principles  of  an  art  to 
the  practice  of  which  the  early  Italians  brought  all 
their  characteristic  subtilty  and  refinement.  This 
volume  discloses  something  more  than  the  possession 
of  those  gifts  which  go  to  the  making  of  a  genuine 
translation ;  it  discloses  a  genius  for  poetry  of  a  very 
high  order.  No  one  but  a  poet  worthy  of  Dante's 
companionship  could  have  entered  so  completely  into 
the  purpose  of  the  "Vita  Nuova,"  and  disposed  about 
the  great  Florentine  in  such  effective  and  luminous 
grouping  the  company  of  singers  who  preceded, 
accompanied,  or  immediately  followed,  the  master. 
The  sonnets,  canzonets,  and  lyrics,  which  represent 
the  work  of  more  than  forty  different  writers,  are 
rendered  into  English  with  a  fidelity  of  spirit,  beauty 
ot  form,  and  melody  of  phrase  which  betray  Ros- 
setti's  double  mastery  of  Italian  thought  and  English 
speech. 

When  we  turn  to  his  own  work,  we  find  the 
subtilty  and  delicacy  of  the  Italian  genius  still 
present,  but  new  and  personal  qualities  appear  to 
attest  the  possession  of  original  gifts  as  well  as  of 
inherited  aptitudes.  It  was  chiefly  through  the  ballad, 
the  lyric,  and  the  sonnet  that  Rossetti  spoke  to  the 
world ;  and  although  in  the  use  of  each  of  these 
forms  he  showed  at  times  a  high  degree  of  metrical 


POETRY  OP  DANTE   GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       83 

skill,  it  will  probably  appear  in  the  end  that  his  genius 
had  more  kinship  with  the  sonnet  than  with  either 
lyric  or  ballad,  and  that  among  all  his  contemporaries 
his  mastery  of  this  delicate  instrument  which  the 
Italians  formed  was  most  complete.  It  is  not  easy, 
however,  to  discriminate  between  varieties  of  form  in 
a  mass  of  work  so  full  of  deep  poetic  emotion  and 
thought  as  Rossetti's.  His  ballads  grow  in  beauty 
and  power  as  we  penetrate  more  and  more  their  often 
obscure  meaning.  It  is  not  alone  their  quaint 
phraseology,  their  archaic  turns  of  speech,  their 
recurring  use  of  obsolete  but  picturesque  words,  that 
impress  us  with  a  sense  of  something  not  akin  to  our 
thought  or  time ;  it  is  the  mediaeval  spirit  which 
pervades  them  and  gives  them  a  deep  and  moving 
spell,  a  glow  and  splendour  such  as  shine  through 
cloister  windows  when  vesper  chants  are  sung.  The 
ballad  as  a  literary  form  belongs  to  social  and  in- 
tellectual conditions  which  have  passed  away  never  to 
return;  but  it  still  offers  to  a  genius  like  Rossetti's 
resources  of  expression  not  to  be  found  in  any  other 
form  of  verse.  It  is  so  nearly  akin  to  the  lyric  that 
it  brings  the  rhythmical  movement  and  thrill  of  the 
singing  note  to  the  narration  of  objective  events  and 
actions ;  and  it  is  so  full  of  dramatic  resources  that  it 
adds  to  directness  of  expression  the  varied  and  con- 
trasted motives  of  the  drama.  It  combines  lyrical 
music  with  dramatic  intensity  and  cumulative  force. 
The  seven  ballads  which  Rossetti  wrote  illustrate  the 
power  and  beauty  with  which  a  poet  of  genius  can 


84       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

inspire  a  form  of  verse  which  has  ceased  in  a  sense 
to  be  a  natural  note  for  modern  thought.  "  Stratton 
Water,"  "The  White  Ship,"  and  "The  King's 
Tragedy"  approach  very  nearly  the  romantic  and 
historic  type  of  the  true  ballad,  and  are  thoroughly 
dramatic  in  spirit,  although  charged  with  intense 
individualism ;  "  Troy  Town,"  "  Eden  Bower," 
"Rose  Mary,"  and  "Sister  Helen"  belong  to  the 
world  of  imaginative  creation,  and  are  essentially 
lyrical  in  quality.  But  it  is  easy  to  push  analysis  too 
far;  and  while  certain  broad  distinctions  may  be 
noted,  Rossetti's  conception  of  the  subject-matter 
of  his  ballads  was  so  intense,  and  in  expression  so 
readily  rose  to  passion,  that  he  is  always  dramatic, 
while  his  sense  of  melody  was  so  quick  that  he  is 
always  lyrical  as  well. 

These  ballads  disclose  very  fully  the  quality  of 
Rossetti's  genius  when  it  deals  with  objective  things. 
They  are  charged  with  imaginative  power ;  one  feels 
not  so  much  the  free  and  beautiful  play  of  the  imagi- 
nation as  in  "  The  Tempest,"  but  the  passion  and  force 
of  it.  The  imagination  has  not  dallied  with  these 
themes,  has  not  contrasted,  compared,  and  balanced 
them  with  kindred  conceptions;  it  has  pierced  to 
their  very  heart,  and  the  thrill  of  personal  anguish 
and  agitation  is  in  them.  There  are  few  poems  in 
any  literature  so  vivid  in  presentation,  so  rapid  in 
climax,  so  deeply  and  mysteriously  tragic  in  motive, 
as  "  Sister  Helen."  It  bears  one  on  shuddering  and 
breathless  until  the  wax  is  consumed,  the  fire  gone 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       85 

out,  the  u  white  thing  "  crossed  the  threshold,  and  the 
story  told  to  its  bitter  end  in  the  refrain  :  — 

"  Lost,  lost,  all  lost,  between  hell  and  heaven." 

In  "  Rose  Mary  "  Rossetti  not  only  illustrates  the 
depth  and  passion  of  love,  but  still  more  clearly  the 
awful  tragedy  which  lies  locked  in  its  heart,  to  be  un- 
folded wherever  the  law  of  its  nature  is  violated. 
Those  who  find  him  essentially  sensuous  will  do  well 
to  study  the  strange  and  rare  setting  which  is  given 
the  Berylstone  in  this  characteristic  ballad.  But  the 
most  impressive  and  probably  the  most  enduring  of 
all  Rossetti's  ballads  is  "The  King's  Tragedy,"  —  a 
noble  work  in  which  one  of  the  most  dramatic  epi- 
sodes in  Scottish  history  is  described  with  wonderful 
vividness  and  power.  The  pictorial  distinctness,  dra- 
matic movement  and  interest,  the  depth  of  feeling 
and  force  of  expression  which  characterize  this  ballad, 
place  it  in  the  front  rank  of  modern  dramatic  verse. 
Rossetti's  use  of  the  supernatural  element  is  nowhere 
more  effective  ;  the  lines  in  which  the  first  warning  of 
the  haggard  old  woman  is  conveyed  to  the  King  on 
the  Fife  seacoast  ring  true  to  the  very  spirit  of  the 
time  and  scene  :  — 

"  And  the  woman  held  his  eyes  with  her  eyes  : 
'  O  King,  thou  art  come  at  last ; 
But  thy  wraith  has  haunted  the  Scotish  sea 
To  my  sight  for  four  years  past. 

'  Four  years  it  is  since  first  I  met, 
'  Twixt  the  Duchray  and  the  Dhu, 
A  shape  whose  feet  clung  close  in  a  shroud, 
And  that  shape  for  thine  I  knew. 


86       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

'A  year  again,  and  on  Inchke'ith  isle 
I  saw  thee  pass  in  the  breeze, 
With  the  cerecloth  risen  above  thy  feet, 
And  wound  about  thy  knees. 

'  And  yet  a  year,  in  the  Links  of  Forth, 

As  a  wanderer  without  rest, 
Thou  cam'st  with  both  thine  arms  i'  the  shroud 
That  clung  high  up  thy  breast. 

1  And  in  this  hour  I  find  thee  here, 

And  well  mine  eyes  may  note 
That  the  winding-sheet  hath  passed  thy  breast 
And  risen  around  thy  throat. 

'  And  when  I  meet  thee  again,  O  King, 

That  of  death  hast  such  sore  drouth, — 
Except  thou  turn  again  on  this  shore, — 
The  winding-sheet  shall  have  moved  once  more, 
And  covered  thine  eyes  and  mouth.' " 

Of  Rossetti's  lyrical  verse  one  poem  has  had  the 
good  or  ill  fortune  to  attain  something  like  popularity, 
—  a  popularity  due,  it  is  to  be  feared,  to  its  picturesque 
and  quaint  phraseology  rather  than  to  its  high  and 
beautiful  imaginative  quality.  "  The  Blessed  Damo- 
sel,"  written  at  nineteen,  remains  one  of  the  most 
captivating  and  original  poems  of  the  century,  —  a  lyric 
full  of  bold  and  winning  imagery  and  charged  with 
imaginative  fervour  and  glow;  a  vision  upon  which 
painter  and  poet  seemed  to  have  wrought  with  a 
single  hand ;  a  thing  of  magical  beauty,  whose  spell  is 
no  more  to  be  analyzed  than  the  beauty  of  the  night 
when  the  earliest  stars  crown  it.     In  all   his  lyrical 


POETRY  OF  DANTE   GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.      87 

work  Rossetti  reveals  the  peculiar  and  passionate 
force  of  his  ideas.  "  The  Burden  of  Nineveh  "  and 
"  Dante  at  Verona  "  are  nobly  planned  and  strongly 
executed.  "The  Last  Confession"  reminds  one  of 
Browning  in  its  subtile  development  of  motives,  its 
dramatic  vigour,  its  psychologic  insight,  and  its  flashes 
of  imaginative  beauty.  "The  Woodspurge  "  is  per- 
haps as  perfect  an  expression  of  a  poet's  mood  as  any 
piece  of  verse  extant ;  it  is  a  masterpiece  of  exact 
observation.  Of  "The  Stream's  Secret"  Mr.  Sted- 
man  has  said  that  it  has  more  music  in  it  than  any 
slow  lyric  he  remembers.  The  depth  of  Rossetti's 
poetic  feeling,  the  subtilty  of  his  conception,  and  the 
delicacy  and  precision  of  his  expression  are  per- 
haps best  illustrated  in  the  poem  entitled  "The  Sea 
Limits  "  :  — 

"  Consider  the  sea's  listless  chime  : 
Time's  self  it  is,  made  audible,  — 
The  murmur  of  the  earth's  own  shell. 

Secret  continuance  sublime 
Is  the  sea's  end :  our  sight  may  pass 
No  furlong  further.     Since  time  was, 

This  sound  hath  told  the  lapse  of  time. 

"  No  quiet,  which  is  death's,  —  it  hath 

The  mournfulness  of  ancient  life, 

Enduring  always  at  dull  strife. 
As  the  world's  heart  of  rest  and  wrath, 

Its  painful  pulse  is  in  the  sands. 

Last  utterly,  the  whole  sky  stands, 
Gray  and  not  known,  along  its  path. 


88       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

"  Listen  alone  beside  the  sea, 

Listen  alone  among  the  woods  ; 

Those  voices  of  twin  solitudes 
Shall  have  one  sound  alike  to  thee. 

Hark  where  the  murmurs  of  thronged  men 

Surge  and  sink  back  and  surge  again, — 
Still  the  one  voice  of  wave  and  tree. 

"  Gather  a  shell  from  the  strown  beach 

And  listen  at  its  lips  :  they  sigh 

The  same  desire  and  mystery, 
The  echo  of  the  whole  sea's  speech. 

And  all  mankind  is  thus  at  heart 

Not  anything  but  what  thou  art : 
And  Earth,  Sea,  Man,  are  all  in  each." 

The  structure  of  the  sonnet  is  at  once  the  inspira- 
tion and  the  despair  of  those  who  would  range  them- 
selves beside  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  Wordsworth 
and  Mrs.  Browning,  in  the  choir  of  English  sonneteers. 
Within  its  narrow  limits  and  under  its  rigid  laws  the 
greatest  poets  have  poured  their  souls  at  full  tide  into 
forms  whose  perfection  predicts  immortality.  This 
delicate  instrument  Rossetti  has  made  his  own,  and 
after  the  manner  of  Shakespeare,  committed  into  its 
keeping  the  secrets  of.  his  inner  life.  It  is  in  the  lines 
of  the  one  hundred  and  fifty-two  sonnets  included  in 
his  published  work  that  we  come  nearest  his  personal 
life.  He  has  given  us  an  admirable  description  of 
this  form  of  verse  :  — 

"A  sonnet  is  a  moment's  monument, — 
Memorial  from  the  Soul's  eternity 
To  one  dead,  deathless  hour.    Look  that  it  be, 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       89 

Whether  for  lustral  rite  or  dire  portent, 
Of  its  own  arduous  fulness  reverent ; 

Carve  it  in  ivory  or  in  ebony, 

As  Day  or  Night  may  rule  ;  and  let  Time  see 
Its  flowering  crest  impearled  and  orient. 
A  sonnet  is  a  coin  :  its  face  reveals 
The  Soul,  —  its  converse,  to  what  Power  'tis  due, — 
Whether  for  tribute  to  the  august  appeals 

Of  Life,  or  dower  in  Love's  high  retinue, 
It  serve  ;  or,  'mid  the  dark  wharfs  cavernous  breath, 
In  Charon's  palm  it  pay  the  toll  to  Death." 

With  this  narrow  frame  of  fourteen  decasyllabic 
lines,  divided  into  the  octave  and  the  sextet,  Rossetti 
has  condensed  some  of  his  most  profoundly  poetic 
conceptions ;  following  the  interior  law  of  the  sonnet 
structure,  he  has  carried  a  single  thought  on  the  flood 
of  a  single  emotion  to  a  swift  climax,  from  which  the 
refluent  wave  recedes  by  a  movement  as  normal  as 
that  which  lifts  the  tides  and  sends  them  back  in 
rhythmic  melody  to  the  deep  from  which  they  came. 
Rossetti's  friend,  Mr.  Theodore  Watts,  has  said  that 
"  for  the  carrying  of  a  single  wave  of  emotion  in  a 
single  flow  and  return,  nothing  has  ever  been  in- 
vented comparable  to  the  Petrarchan  sonnet,  with  an 
octave  of  two  rhymes  of  a  prescribed  arrangement, 
and  a  sextet  which  is  in  some  sense  free."  This  form 
served  Rossetti  as  his  type,  although  he  uses  it  not 
imitatively  but  with  the  freedom  and  facility  of  a 
master.  The  dramatic  power,  the  movement  and 
life  which  he  can  introduce  within  the  compass  of  a 
sonnet,  are  well  illustrated  by  these  lines  on  "  Mary 


9>0       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION.         ' 

Magdalene  at  the  Door  of  Simon  the  Pharisee,"  sug- 
gested by  a  drawing  in  which  Mary  has  left  a  festal 
procession  and  by  a  sudden  impulse  seeks  Christ 
within,  her  lover  following  and  endeavouring  to  turn 
her  back :  — 

"  Why  wilt  thou  cast  the  roses  from  thine  hair  ? 

Nay,  be  thou  all  a  rose,  —  wreath,  lips,  and  cheek. 

Nay,  not  this  house,  —  that  banquet-house  we  seek  ; 
See  how  they  kiss  and  enter  ;  come  thou  there. 
This  delicate  day  of  love  we  two  will  share 

Till  at  our  ear  love's  whispering  night  shall  speak. 

What,  sweet  one,  —  hold'st  thou  still  the  foolish  freak  ? 
Nay,  when  I  kiss  thy  feet,  they  '11  leave  the  stair. 

"  Oh,  loose  me  !    See'st  thou  not  my  Bridegroom's  face 
That  draws  me  to  Him  ?     For  His  feet  my  kiss, 
My  hair,  my  tears,  He  craves  to-day  ;  and  oh  1 
What  words  can  tell  what  other  day  and  place 
Shall  see  me  clasp  those  blood-stained  feet  of  His  ? 
He  needs  me,  calls  me,  loves  me ;  let  me  go !  " 

"  The  House  of  Life,"  described  as  a  sonnet- 
sequence,  is  undoubtedly  the  noblest  contribution  in 
this  form  of  verse  yet  made  to  our  literature.  It 
should  be  studied  with  Shakespeare's  sonnets  and 
with  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese," 
in  order  that  its  wealth  of  thought,  its  varied  beauty 
of  phrase,  and  its  depth  of  feeling  may  be  compre- 
hended. It  tells  the  same  heart  story,  but  in  how 
different  a  key !  The  hundred  and  more  sonnets 
which  compose  it  are  a  revelation  of  the  poet's 
nature ;    all  its  ideals,  its  passions,  its    hopes    and 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       9 1 

despairs,  its  changeful  moods,  are  reflected  there ; 
and  there,  too,  a  man's  heart  beats,  in  one  hour 
with  the  freedom  of  a  great  joy,  and  in  another 
against  the  iron  bars  of  fate. 

Rossetti  is  not,  like  Goethe,  Hugo,  Browning,  and 
Tennyson,  an  interpreter  of  his  age ;  the  key  to  its 
wide  and  confused  movement  is  not  to  be  found  in 
any  work  of  his  hand.  He  heard  its  turmoil  only  as 
Michael  Angelo  may  have  heard  the  noise  of  the  city 
faintly  bome  to  the  scaffolding  which  concealed  the 
"  Last  Judgment."  Intent  upon  his  own  work,  the 
uproar  of  life  was  only  a  hushed  murmur  on  the  si- 
lence in  which  art  always  enshrines  itself.  His  was 
not  that  spiritual  puissance  which  carries  the  repose 
of  solitude  into  the  noisy  ways  of  men ;  recognizing 
his  own  limitations,  —  if  limitations  they  were,  —  he 
held  himself  apart  and  let  the  world  go  its  way. 
That  way  was  far  from  his,  and  to  close  most  mod- 
ern books  and  open  upon  "  The  King's  Tragedy  " 
or  "The  House  of  Life"  is  like  passing  from  the 
brilliant  square  electric  with  stir  and  change,  or  the 
sunny  meadow  asleep  like  a  child  with  daisies  in  its 
hands,  into  some  depth  of  forest  awful  with  the  mys- 
tery of  wraith  and  vision,  or  into  some  secluded 
ietreat  where  Love  hears  no  sound  but  the  throb 
of  its  own  passion,  and  sees  no  image  save  that  one 
face  whose  compelling  beauty  is  the  mask  of  fate. 
Rossetti  was  pre-eminently  an  artist ;  one  who  saw 
the  ultimate  things  of  life,  not  along  the  lines  of  in- 
tellectual striving  and  inquiry  nor  in  the  moral  dis- 


92       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

closures  of  action,  but  in  those  ravishing  perfections 
of  form  and  being  which  seem  to  be  finalities  because 
the  imagination,  baffled  by  their  very  completeness, 
cannot  pass  beyond.  He  was  an  artist,  not  after  the 
manner  of  Tennyson,  whose  literary  insight  matches 
itself  with  a  melody  that  presses  fast  upon  music 
itself;  not  after  the  manner  of  Sophocles,  to  whose 
work  proportion  and  harmony  and  repose  gave  the 
impress  of  a  supreme  and  final  achievement ;  but  after 
the  fashion  of  some  of  the  mystical  painters,  whose 
vision  included  that  interior  beauty  which  is  the  soul 
of  visible  things ;  which  cannot  be  formulated  nor 
analyzed  nor  dissevered  from  itself  by  an  intellectual 
process,  but  is  the  pure  product  of  intuition,  —  some- 
thing never  to  be  demonstrated,  but  always  to  be 
revealed.  "The  Beautiful,"  said  Goethe,  "is  a  pri- 
meval phenomenon,  which  indeed  never  becomes 
visible  itself,  but  the  reflection  of  which  is  seen  in 
a  thousand  various  expressions  of  the  creative  mind, 
as  various  and  manifold  even  as  the  phenomena  of 
Nature."  This  quality  of  perception  is  so  different 
from  the  literary  faculty  as  most  poets  disclose  it 
that  it  may  almost  be  said  to  characterize  another 
order  of  mind.  Beauty  is  one  of  the  finalities  of 
creation,  and  is,  therefore,  unresolvable  into  its  ele- 
ments ;  something  instantly  recognized,  but  vanish- 
ing when  we  try  to  press  its  secret  from  it.  Rossetti 
did  not  see  beautiful  aspects  of  things  chiefly,  or  we 
could  overtake  his  mental  processes ;  he  saw  beauty 
itself.     It  was  not  the  attributes  but  the  quality  which 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       93 

he  perceived.  He  did  not  discern  beauty  as  one 
form  through  which  the  soul  of  things  expresses  it- 
self; he  discerned  it  as  the  form,  the  final  and  per- 
fect expression  which  is  substantially  identical  with 
the  soul.  To  most  modern  poets  life  presents  itself 
under  a  vast  variety  of  aspects ;  the  soul  wears  as 
many  masks  as  she  has  activities.  But  to  Rossetti 
there  is  no  such  multiplicity  of  expression ;  there  is 
but  a  single  face,  and  all  things  are  revealed  therein. 
To  a  man  of  this  temper,  philosophy,  and  statescraft, 
schools  and  creeds,  knowledge  and  action,  the  warp 
and  woof  out  of  which  the  fabrics  of  thought  and 
art  are  commonly  woven,  are  of  small  account;  he 
may  not  disparage  them,  but  he  finds  no  use  in  them ; 
he  passes  through  all  this  appearance  of  things,  so 
rich  in  revelation  to  others,  to  something  which  he 
sees  behind  them  all,  and  to  which,  if  they  had  any 
power  of  guidance,  they  could  but  lead  him  in  the 
end.  Life  is  not  divided  for  him  into  confused 
activities  and  disconnected  phases ;  it  is  simple ;  re- 
veals itself  even  in  pain ;  presses  back  the  blackness 
of  the  mystery ;  and  conveys  the  irrefutable  evidence 
of  immortality.  It  is  idle  to  speculate,  to  press 
through  effect  to  cause,  to  interrogate  knowledge ; 
the  vision  of  beauty,  once  discerned,  does  not  forsake 
the  soul,  and  confirms  the  hope,  alien  to  no  human 
heart,  that  happiness  and  immortality  are  one  and 
the  same :  — 

"  Nay,  come  up  hither.     From  this  wave-washed  mound 
Unto  the  furthest  flood-brim  look  with  me  ; 


94       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Then  reach  on  with  thy  thought  till  it  be  drown'd. 

Miles  and  miles  distant  though  the  last  line  be, 
And  though  thy  soul  sail  leagues  and  leagues  beyond,  — 

Still,  leagues  beyond  those  leagues,  there  is  more  sea." 

The  beauty  of  the  universe,  which  to  Rossetti  was 
both  law  and  revelation  of  life,  was  not  that  fair  ap- 
pearance of  things  which  the  Greeks  loved  with  a  joy 
born  of  a  sense  of  kinship  with  the  thing  we  love; 
nor  was  it  that  pale,  unworldly  vision  which  enthralled 
some  of  the  early  mediaeval  painters.  It  was  a  beauty 
to  which  nothing  is  foreign  which  life  contains ;  it 
was  in  the  most  sensuous  and  the  most  spiritual 
things ;  it  lay  open  to  all  eyes  on  the  meanest  flower, 
and  it  was  hidden  in  the  most  obscure  symbol.  It 
led  up  from  the  throb  of  passion,  from  eyes  and  lips 
wholly  of  the  earth,  through  all  visible  things,  to  that 
great  white  rose  in  which  the  vision  of  Dante  rested 
in  Paradise.  It  pervades  all  things  and  yet  is  not 
contained  by  them. 

"  Hers  are  the  eyes  which,  over  and  beneath, 

The  sky  and  sea  bend  on  thee  ;  which  can  draw, 
By  sea  or  sky  or  woman,  to  one  law, 
The  allotted  bondman  of  her  palm  and  wreath." 

Plato  discerned  this  conception  of  beauty  as  an 
ideal  which  reveals  itself  under  all  forms  to  its  wor- 
shipper :  "  He  that  gazed  so  earnestly  on  what  things 
in  that  holy  place  were  to  be  seen,  —  he,  when  he  dis- 
cerns on  earth  some  godlike  countenance  or  fashion 
of  body,  that  counterfeits  Beauty  well,  first  of  all  he 


POETRY  OF  DANTE  GABRIEL   ROSSETTI.       95 

trembles,  and  then  comes  over  him  something  of  the 
fear  which  erst  he  knew ;  but  then,  looking  on  that 
earthly  beauty,  he  worships  it  as  divine,  and  if  he  did 
not  fear  the  reproach  of  utter  madness,  he  would  sac- 
rifice to  his  heart's  idol  as  to  the  image  and  presence 
of  a  God." 

To  one  who  is  possessed  by  this  passion,  life  does 
not  cease  to  be  perplexing,  to  be  a  mystery  of  un- 
fathomable depth ;  but  it  ceases  to  press  its  questions 
for  instant  answer,  it  ceases  to  paralyze  by  its  uncer- 
tainty; the  runner  is  not  oblivious  of  the  shadows 
that  surround  and  pursue  him,  but  he  thinks  chiefly 
of  the  vision  which  draws  him  through  works  and  days 
with  irresistible  insistence  :  — 

"  Under  the  arch  of  life,  where  love  and  death, 
Terror  and  mystery,  guard  her  shrine,  I  saw 
Beauty  enthroned ;  and  though  her  gaze  struck  awe, 
I  drew  it  in  as  simply  as  my  breath. 

"  This  is  that  Lady  Beauty,  in  whose  praise 

Thy  voice  and  hand  shake  still,  —  long  known  to  thee 
By  flying  hair  and  fluttering  hem, —  the  beat, 
Following  her  daily,  of  thy  heart  and  feet, 
How  passionately  and  irresistibly, 
In  what  fond  flight,  how  many  ways  and  days." 

It  was  this  passion  which  made  Rossetti's  life  one 
long,  eager  pursuit,  which  gives  his  art,  whether  in 
painting  or  in  verse,  the  sense  of  something  just  be- 
yond his  grasp,  a  presence  hovering  forever  before 
him  and  receding  as  he  advances.  This  ideal  became 
most  clear  to  him,  not  through  the  myriad  aspects  of 


96       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

nature,  but  in  a  woman's  face ;  it  was  not  a  mere  ap- 
pearance of  beauty,  it  was  a  soul  revealing  itself;  it 
was  life  removing  its  masks  of  shame  and  indignity 
and  discovering  its  divine  loveliness.  Like  the  Bea- 
trice of  Dante's  vision,  this  face  looked  through  and 
interpreted  all  his  experiences.  All  the  passion  of  his 
soul  sets  like  a  mighty  tide  toward  this  object  of 
mystical  adoration ;  all  forms  of  human  expression, 
the  most  familiar,  the  most  intimate,  the  most  intense, 
the  most  sensuous,  are  charged  with  the  flow  of  his 
emotion  and  cannot  contain  it.  It  ceases  to  be  a 
pursuit;  it  becomes  a  life. 

There  is  one  other  word  yet  to  be  spoken  which 
describes  this  enthralling  passion.  One  must  go  back 
to  Plato  and  study  the  "  Phsedrus  "  and  the  "  Sympo- 
sium," one  must  steep  his  mind  in  the  mystical 
thought  of  Dante,  to  understand  all  that  love  meant 
to  Rossetti.  It  meant  the  consummation  and  fulfil- 
ment of  all  that  life  promised  and  prophesied ;  it 
meant  that  final  state  of  being  in  which  knowl- 
edge and  experience  and  action  find  their  eternal 
fruition :  — 

"  Not  I  myself  know  all  my  love  for  thee : 

How  should  I  reach  so  far,  who  cannot  weigh 
To-morrow's  dower  by  gage  of  yesterday  ? 
Shall  birth  and  death,  and  all  dark  names  that  be 
As  doors  and  windows  bared  to  some  loud  sea, 
Lash  deaf  my  ears  and  blind  my  face  with  spray; 
And  shall  my  sense  pierce  love,  —  the  last  relay 
And  ultimate  outpost  of  eternity  ?  " 


POETRY  OP  DANTE   GABRIEL  ROSSETTI.       97 

Before  time  was,  love  was,  Rossetti  tells  us  in  those 
deep  and  tender  lines  entitled  "  Sudden  Light ;  " 
after  time  ends  it  shall  be,  or  else  the  Blessed  Damo- 
sel  leans  in  vain  from  the  golden  bar  of  heaven. 
Love  is  "  the  interpreter  and  mediator  between  God 
and  man ;  "  only  through  loving  do  we  come  to  full 
knowledge,  only  in  loving  do  we  taste  eternal  life. 
To  this  great  passion  of  the  soul  all  knowledge  is 
tributary  and  instrumental ;  to  know  is  not  the  con- 
summation, but  to  love.  The  great  process  of  life, 
therefore,  involves  not  only  knowledge  and  action, 
but  the  soul ;  changes  one  from  a  spectator  or  student 
of  its  phenomena  into  a  rapt  and  tireless  seeker  of  the 
ideal.  The  senses,  the  intellect,  relations  of  every 
sort  and  kind,  reveal  the  object  and  develop  the  in- 
tensity of  this  pursuit.  One  is  possessed  by  a  mighty 
thirst  which  nothing  can  assuage  save  that  supreme 
surrender  of  self  in  which  love  finds  its  opportunity 
and  discloses  its  power.  This  conception  is  essen- 
tially mystical ;  its  speech  is  esoteric,  but  when  one 
translates  it  into  prose,  it  is  true  to  the  deepest  facts 
of  life.  It  formulates  no  code  of  morals,  but  its 
eternal  test  is  purity  and  truth ;  sacrifice  and  sur- 
render; the  passion  of  the  soul  which  counts  all 
things  well  lost  if  only  it  becomes  one  with  the  Infi- 
nite Love.  This  is  the  passion  which  expands  the 
vast  symphony  of  life  out  of  a  single  theme,  and 
presses  from  every  note,  however  sensuous  in  tone,  a 
pure  and  lofty  music.  Of  the  large  element  of  truth 
in  this  conception  there  can  be  no  question  even  by 
7 


98       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

those  who  crave  a  different  and  more  distinctively  spir- 
itual expression.  To  the  sensuous  alone  can  "The 
House  of  Life"  be  sensuous;  it  is  to  be  interpreted 
as  akin  with  the  "  Vita  Nuova ; "  the  same  mood  runs 
through  both,  although  one  is  the  word  of  an  artist 
and  the  other  the  vision  of  a  prophet.  Beauty  as  the 
finality  of  expression,  love  as  the  finality  of  being,  — 
these  are  the  truths  that  give  all  Rossetti's  works  and 
words  a  noble  unity  and  consistency  of  aim  and 
achievement. 


Robert  Browning. 


faUit  A&*rt*i"f 


ROBERT  BROWNING. 

The  best  minds  still  hold  the  old  conception  of 
poetry  as  a  revelation,  as  containing  something  more 
and  something  greater  than  the  individual  poet  in- 
tended or  even  comprehended  when  the  creative 
impulse  and  energy  possessed  him.  The  story  he 
told,  the  song  he  sang,  convey  more  than  the 
definite  truth,  the  striking  incident,  the  inspiring 
vision ;  they  disclose  the  deeper  mind  of  the  singer 
in  his  conscious  and  unconscious  relations  to  his 
time  and  to  universal  life.  It  is  quite  conceivable 
that  in  one  sense  the  critics  have  found  more  in 
"  Faust "  than  Goethe  consciously  embodied  in  that 
marvellous  drama  of  human  experience.  Clearly  as 
the  great  German  had  thought  his  way  through 
all  knowledge,  and  thoroughly  as  he  had  rationalized 
his  life,  there  were  forces  in  his  nature  whose  mo- 
mentum and  tendency  he  never  understood;  there 
were  depths  in  his  habitual  meditation  which  he 
never  sounded.  His  relation  to  his  own  time  and 
the  character  and  movement  of  that  time  were 
matters  of  frequent  and  searching  thought  to  him ; 
and  yet  in  the  age  and  in  his  part  in  it  there  was 
much  that  was  invisible  or  obscure  to  him.    There  is 


IOO     ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

in  "  Faust  "  a  revelation  of  the  time  through  its  most 
sensitive  personality,  of  which,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
the  poet  was  for  the  most  part  unconscious.  This 
fact  does  not  diminish  the  greatness  of  such  an 
achievement  as  the  writing  of  a  classic  drama;  it 
simply  recalls  the  supplementary  fact  that  as  every  work 
of  art  discloses  relations  to  universal  principles  and  to 
an  historical  development,  so  every  artist  discovers 
certain  far-reaching  and  highly  significant  spiritual 
and  intellectual  affinities,  which  are  so  completely 
a  part  of  himself  that  he  never  separates  them  in 
consciousness. 

The  poet,  by  a  law  of  his  nature,  is  compelled  to 
open  his  heart  to  us;  when  he  plans  to  conceal 
himself  most  securely,  he  is  making  the  thing  he 
would  hide  most  clear  to  us.  Shakespeare  is  the 
most  impersonal  of  poets,  and  yet  no  poet  has  made 
us  understand  more  clearly  the  conditions  under 
which,  in  his  view,  this  human  life  of  ours  is  lived ; 
while  of  Byron,  who 

"  bore 

With  haughty  scorn  which  mock'd  the  smart, 

Through  Europe  to  the  yEtolian  shore 

The  pageant  of  his  bleeding  heart," 

and  of  many  another  of  his  temperament,  we  possess 
the  fullest  and  most  trustworthy  knowledge.  But  the 
poet  tells  our  secret  as  frankly  as  he  tells  his  own. 
We  are  irresistibly  drawn  to  him,  not  only  because  he 
gives  us  his  view  of  things,  the  substance  of  his 
personal  life,  but  because  he  makes  ourselves  clear 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  IOI 

.  and  comprehensible  to  us.  It  is  our  thought  in  his 
words  which  has  such  power  to  bring  back  the  vision 
which  has  faded  off  the  horizon  of  life  and  left  it  bare 
and  empty ;  to  restore  the  vigour  of  faith  and  the 
clearness  of  insight  which  have  failed  us  because  we 
have  not  trusted  them.  It  is  this  restoration  of  our 
truest  selves  to  us  which  gives  the  great  poets  such 
power  over  us,  and  makes  their  great  works  at  once 
so  remote  and  so  familiar.  In  its  most  characteristic 
singers,  each  age  finds  itself  searched  to  the  very 
bottom  of  its  consciousness.  The  scientists  tell  us 
something  of  our  time,  the  philosophers,  the  critics, 
and  the  writers  of  discursive  mind  more ;  but  the 
poet  alone  knows  the  secret  of  its  joys  or  its  sorrows, 
its  activity  or  its  repose,  its  progress  or  its  retro- 
gression. All  these  things  enter  vitally  into  his  life ; 
and  in  giving  expression  to  his  own  thought,  he  gives 
them  form  and  substance.  We  learn  more  of  the 
heart  of  mediaevalism  from  Dante  than  from  all  the 
historians;  more  of  the  England  of  Elizabeth  from 
Shakespeare  than  from  all  the  chroniclers;  and  the 
future  will  find  the  essential  character  of  the  Amer- 
ica of  the  last  half-century  more  clearly  revealed  in 
Emerson  and  Lowell  and  Whitman  than  in  all  the 
industrious  recorders  who  were  their  less  penetrating 
contemporaries. 

Robert  Browning  offers  us  a  double  revelation  :  he 
discloses  the  range  and  the  affinities  of  his  own 
nature  and  the  large  and  significant  thought  of  his 
time  concerning  those  matters  which  form  the  very 


102      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

substance  of  its  life.  Burns  drove  his  ploughshare 
through  his  own  native  soil,  singing  as  he  went,  and 
the  daisy  blossomed  in  the  furrow,  and  the  lark  sang 
overhead ;  but  Browning  takes  the  whole  world  as 
his  field,  and  harvests  every  sort  of  product  which 
goes  to  the  sustenance  of  men.  A  poet  of  such  \ 
wide  range  and  such  wellnigh  universal  insight  de-  : 
mands  much  of  his  readers,  and  must  wait  patiently  : 
for  their  acceptance  of  his  claims.  He  offers  that  * 
which  necessitates  a  peculiar  training  before  it  can  be 
received.  The  Greeks  held  it  dangerous  to  accept 
gifts  from  the  gods;  even  at  the  altar,  men  must 
give  as  well  as  receive  if  their  relations  with  the 
Invisible  and  the  Eternal  are  to  be  moral  and  self- 
respecting.  They  only  truly  worship  in  whom  some- 
thing responds  to  the  Divine,  and  comprehends  it. 
In  the  same  way  the  great  thinkers  and  artists  compel 
a  certain  preparation  in  those  to  whom  they  would 
communicate  that  which  is  incommunicable  save  to 
kindred  insight  and  sympathy.  The  flower  by  the 
wayside  discovers  its  superficial  loveliness  to  every 
eye  ;  but  they  are  few  to  whom  it  discloses  its  identity 
with  the  universal  beauty  which  makes  it  akin  with 
the  flight  of  birds  and  the  splendour  of  stars.  It  is  ' 
only  by  degrees  that  the  most  sympathetic  minds 
enter  into  the  fundamental  conceptions  of  life  and 
the  universe  which  another  has  reached  as  the  result 
of  long  and  eager  thinking  and  living.  The  more 
fundamental  and  vital  those  conceptions  are,  the 
more  tardy  will  be   their  complete   recognition  by 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  103 

others.  A  swift,  alert,  acute  mind  like  Voltaire's 
makes  all  its  processes  clear,  and  the  result  of  its 
activity,  varied  as  it  may  be,  is  soon  measured  and 
ascertained;  but  a  profound,  vital  intellect  like 
Herder's,  entering  into  the  living  processes  of  Nature 
and  of  history,  finds  little  sympathy  and  less  compre- 
hension until,  by  the  slow  and  painful  education  of  a 
general  movement  of  mind,  the  range  and  value  of  its 
contribution  to  human  thought  are  understood.  We 
have  already  exhausted  Voltaire  ;  but  the  most  in- 
telligent and  open-minded  student  of  modern  life  and 
thought  still  finds  in  Herder  hints  of  movements 
which  are  yet  to  touch  our  intellectual  lives  with  fresh 
impulse,  —  thoughts  which  are  unlighted  torches  wait- 
ing for  the  hand  strong  enough  to  ignite  and  bear 
them  forward. 

If  Browning's  genius  has  remained  long  unrecog- 
nized and  unhonoured  among  his  contemporaries,  the 
frequent  harshness  and  obscurity  of  his  expression 
must  not  bear  the  whole  responsibility.  His  thought 
holds  so  much  that  is  novel,  so  much  that  is  as  yet 
unadjusted  to  knowledge,  art,  and  actual  living,  that 
its  complete  apprehension  even  by  the  most  open- 
minded  must  be  slow  and  long  delayed.  No  English 
poet  ever  demanded  more  of  his  readers,  and  none 
has  ever  had  more  to  give  them.  Since  Shakespeare 
no  maker  of  English  verse  has  seen  life  on  so  many 
sides,  entered  into  it  with  such  intensity  of  sympathy 
and  imagination,  and  pierced  it  to  so  many  centres 
of  its  energy  and  motivity.     No  other  has  so  com- 


104      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

pletely  mastered  the  larger  movement  of  modern 
thought  on  the  constructive  side,  or  so  deeply  felt 
and  so  adequately  interpreted  the  modern  spirit.  It 
is  significant  of  his  insight  into  the  profounder  rela- 
tions of  things  that  Browning  has  also  entered  with 
such  characteristic  thoroughness  of  intellectual  and 
spiritual  kinship  into  Greek  and  Italian  thought ;  has 
rendered  the  serene  and  noble  beauty  of  the  one  into 
forms  as  obviously  true  and  sincere  as  "  Cleon,"  and 
the  subtile  and  passionate  genius  of  the  other  into 
forms  as  characteristic  as  "The  Ring  and  the  Book." 
A  mind  capable  of  dealing  at  first  hand  with  themes 
so  diverse  evidently  possesses  the  key  to  that  uni- 
versal movement  of  life  in  which  all  race  activities 
and  histories  are  included,  not  by  violent  and  arbi- 
trary adjustment  of  differences,  but  by  insight  into 
those  deep  and  vital  relations  which  give  history  its 
continuity  of  revelation  and  its  unity  of  truth.  It  is 
a  long  road  which  stretches  from  the  CEdipus  of 
Sophocles  to  "  Pippa  Passes  ;  "  but  if  Browning's  con- 
ception of  life  is  true,  it  is  a  highway  worn  by  the  feet 
of  marching  generations,  and  not  a  series  of  alien  and 
antagonistic  territories,  each  unrelated  to  the  other. 
The  continuity  of  civilization  and  of  the  life  of  the 
human  spirit,  widening  by  an  inevitable  and  health- 
ful process  of  growth  and  expansion,  evidently  enters 
into  all  his  thought,  and  gives  it  a  certain  repose  even 
in  the  intensity  of  passionate  utterance.  Whatever 
decay  of  former  ideals  and  traditions  his  contempo- 
raries may  discover  and  lament,  Browning  holds  to 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 05 

the  general  soundness  and  wholesomeness  of  progress, 
and  finds  each  successive  stage  of  growth  not  antago- 
nistic but  supplementary  to  those  which  have  pre- 
ceded it.  His  view  of  life  involves  the  presence  of 
those  very  facts  and  tendencies  which  a  less  daring 
and  less  penetrating  spiritual  insight  finds  full  of 
disillusion  and  bitterness.  Though  all  the  world  turn 
pessimist,  this  singer  will  still  drink  of  the  fountain 
of  joy,  and  trace  the  courses  of  the  streams  that  flow 
from  it  by  green  masses  of  foliage  and  the  golden 
glory  of  fruit.  To  carry  in  one's  soul  the  memory  of 
what  Greece  was  and  wrought  in  her  imperishable 
arts,  the  memory  of  the  mighty  stir  which  broke  the 
sod  of  mediaevalism  and  reclaimed  the  world  for  the 
springtide  of  the  Renaissance,  and  yet  to  live  serenely 
in  perpetual  presence  of  the  Ideal  in  our  confused 
and  turbulent  modern  life,  involves  a  more  funda- 
mental insight  than  most  of  our  poets  possess.  For 
the  majority  safety  is  to  be  found  only  in  tillage  of 
the  acres  that  lie  warm  and  familiar  under  a  native 
sky ;  to  travel  among  strange  races  and  hear  strange 
tongues,  confuses,  perplexes,  and  paralyzes ;  the  world 
is  too  vast  for  them.  Life  has  expanded  so  immeas- 
urably on  all  sides  that  only  the  strongest  spirits  can 
safely  give  themselves  up  to  it.  Of  these  sovereign 
natures  it  is  Browning's  chief  distinction  that  he  is 
one ;  that  he  asserts  and  sustains  the  mastery  of  the 
soul  over  all  knowledge ;  that  instead  of  being  over- 
whelmed by  the  vastness  of  modern  life,  he  rejoices 
in  it  as  the  swimmer  rejoices  when  he  feels  the  fathom- 


Io6      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

less  sea  buoyant  to  his  stroke,  and  floats  secure,  the 
abysses  beneath  and  the  infinity  of  space  overhead. 
No  better  service  certainly  can  the  greatest  mind 
render  humanity  to-day  than  just  this  calm  reassur- 
ance of  its  sovereignty  in  a  universe  whose  growing 
immensity  makes  the  apparent  insignificance  of  man 
so  painfully  evident ;  no  prophet  could  bring  to  us  a 
message  so  charged  with  consolation  as  this.  To 
see  clearly  and  love  intensely  whatever  was  just  and 
noble  and  ideal  in  the  past ;  to  understand  the  inevi- 
table changes  that  have  come  over  the  thoughts  and 
lives  of  men  ;  to  discern  a  unity  of  movement  through 
them  all ;  to  find  a  deepening  of  soul  in  art  and  life ; 
to  bear  knowledge  and  know  that  it  is  subordinate  to 
character ;  to  look  the  darkest  facts  in  the  face,  and 
discern  purpose  and  love  in  them ;  to  hold  the  note 
of  triumph  and  hope  amid  the  discordant  cries  of 
terror  and  perplexity  and  despair,  —  this  is  what 
Browning  has  done ;  and  for  this  service,  no  matter 
what  we  think  of  his  art,  those  who  are  wise  enough 
to  know  what  such  a  service  involves  will  not  withhold 
the  sincerest  recognition. 

Poetry  is  always  a  personal  interpretation  of  life,  — 
an  interpretation,  that  is,  which  reveals  truth  through 
a  personality.  For  purposes  of  literature  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  impersonal  or  abstract  truth ;  that  which 
through  the  medium  of  language  makes  the  expres- 
sion or  embodiment  of  truth  literature,  is  always  the 
presence  of  the  personal  element.  The  same  truths  in 
the  hands  of  Spencer  and  of  Tennyson  will  take  on 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  107 

widely  different  forms  :  the  scientist  will  give  his  state- 
ment clearness,  precision,  definite  relation  to  kindred 
facts  ;  the  poet  will  suffuse  his  verse  with  imagination, 
suggest  the  universal  relationship  of  his  truth,  and 
stamp  his  expression  with  the  indefinable  something 
which  we  call  literature.  If  we  define  this  intangible 
something  as  style,  we  have  really  added  nothing  to 
our  knowledge ;  for  in  the  last  analysis,  style,  as  Buffon 
long  ago  said,  is  the  man.  Turn  the  thought  of  the 
greatest  poets  —  Sophocles,  Dante,  or  Shakespeare  — 
into  your  own  prose,  and  you  will  have  a  valuable 
residuum  of  truth ;  but  the  quality  which  made  that 
truth  literature  has  somehow  escaped.  You  have 
kept  the  thought ;  but  Sophocles,  Dante,  and  Shake- 
speare have  slipped  through  your  fingers. 

The  correspondence  between  Goethe  and  Carlyle 
shows  the  German  poet  meditating  on  a  world-litera- 
ture. Such  a  literature  would  be  produced,  not  by 
the  impersonal  expression  of  universal  ideas  and  as- 
pirations, but  by  the  clear  and  noble  utterance  of 
powerful  personalities  of  the  very  substance  of  whose 
life  these  things  should  be  part.  The  individual 
genius  of  the  artist  must  always  make  universal  beauty 
evident  to  us ;  and  in  literature  personal  insight  and 
power  must  always  interpret  truth  to  us.  Those 
writers  who  are  predicting  the  decline  of  literature  in 
the  growing  influence  of  science  overlook  one  of  the 
most  profound  and  permanent  processes  in  Nature. 
Their  conception  of  the  relation  of  the  soul  to  its 
environment  is  radically  defective  in  that  it  fails  to 


108      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

take  into  account  that  deepest  and  richest  of  all  the 
methods  by  which  truth  flows  into  and  enriches  the 
common  life  of  humanity  as  the  sun  pours  its  vitality 
into  and  enlarges  the  life  of  the  earth,  —  that  method 
by  which,  in  the  simple  experience  of  living,  truth  is 
continually  revealed  and  made  clear  to  individual  men 
and  women.  Life  is  fed  by  unseen  streams  quite  as 
fully  and  constantly  as  by  those  streams  whose  courses 
science  traces  with  admirable  precision  and  accuracy. 
There  are  certain  truths  which  never  came  by  obser- 
vation, which  have  found  their  way  into  the  universal 
consciousness  through  the  secret  experiences  of  count- 
less personalities.  Life  itself,  in  all  its  multiplied 
forms,  —  love,  suffering,  desire,  aspiration,  satiety, 
anguish,  death,  —  is  the  greatest  teacher  of  men. 
These  experiences  have  more  for  us  than  we  shall  ever 
find  in  the  textbooks ;  they  penetrate  us  with  their 
obscure  and  terrible  lessons,  —  obscure  until  we  slowly 
grow  into  harmony  with  them,  terrible  until  we  dis- 
cover that  this  education  alone  makes  us  masters  of 
ourselves.  The  potter  does  not  hold  the  vessel  on 
the  wheel  hour  after  hour,  under  an  irresistible  pres- 
sure, without  disclosing,  in  curve  and  line,  something 
of  his  design ;  and  humanity  has  not  been  held  under 
the  terrible  pressure  of  the  conditions  of  its  life  with- 
out reproducing,  by  a  process  of  which  it  was  uncon- 
scious, the  general  lines  of  the  purpose  which  is  being 
wrought  out  through  it.  Profounder  truth  has  come, 
unaware  and  invisibly,  into  human  thought,  through 
the  pressure  of  circumstances   and   the  struggle  of 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 09 

mere  living  upon  solitary  and  isolated  individual  lives 
than  through  the  activity  of  the  observing  and  ra- 
tionalizing faculties.  God  pours  himself  into  indi- 
vidual souls  as  Nature  pours  herself  into  individual 
plants  and  trees. 

This  truth  once  clearly  comprehended,  the  place 
and  value  of  personality  in  life  and  art  are  plain 
enough.  Life  is  the  one  great  fact  which  art  is  always 
endeavouring  to  express  and  illustrate  and  interpret ; 
and  art  is  the  supreme  and  final  form  in  which  life 
is  always  striving  to  utter  itself.  Greek  art  was, 
within  its  limitations,  nobly  complete,  because  Greek 
life  attained  a  full  and  adequate  development;  and 
Greek  life  being  what  it  was,  the  beauty  and  harmony 
of  Greek  art  were  inevitable.  The  truths  and  forces 
which  determine  the  quality  of  life  are  always  wrought 
out,  or  find  channels  for  themselves,  through  individ- 
uals; and  the  individual  temperament,  adaptation, 
genius,  always  adds  to  the  expression  of  truth  that 
quality  which  transforms  it  into  art.  Now,  of  this 
subtile  relation  of  personality  to  life  and  art  Browning 
has,  of  all  modern  poets,  the  clearest  and  most  fruit- 
ful understanding.  It  is  involved  in  his  fundamental 
conception  of  life  and  art ;  and  in  its  illustration  his 
genius  has  lavished  its  resources.  The  general  order 
of  things,  no  less  than  the  isolated  individual  expe- 
rience, become  comprehensible  to  him  when  it  is  seen 
that  through  personality  the  universe  reveals  itself, 
and  in  the  high  and  final  development  of  personality 
the   universe   accomplishes   the    immortal   work   for 


HO      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

which  the  shining  march  of  its  suns  and  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  its  vital  tides  were  ordained. 

To  say  this  is  to  say  that  Browning  is  a  philoso- 
pher as  well  as  a  poet,  and  that  his  verse,  instead  of 
lending  itself  to  the  lyric  utterance  of  isolated  emo- 
tion, becomes  the  medium  through  which  the  uni- 
versal harmony  of  things  is  translated  into  song.  It 
would  not  be  difficult  to  indicate  the  sources  from 
which  Browning  has  received  intellectual  impulses  of 
the  highest  importance  ;  but  his  thought  of  life  as  it 
lies  revealed  in  his  work,  although  allied  to  more 
than  one  system,  is  essentially  his  own.  Of  all  Eng- 
lish poets  he  is  the  most  difficult  to  classify,  and  his 
originality  as  a  thinker  is  no  less  striking.  It  is  true 
of  him,  as  of  most  great  thinkers,  that  his  real  con- 
tribution to  our  common  fund  of  thought  lies  not  so 
much  in  the  disclosure  of  entirely  new  truths  as  in 
fresh  and  fruitful  application  of  truths  already  known ; 
in  a  survey  of  life  complete,  adequate,  and  altogether 
novel  in  the  clearness  and  harmony  with  which  a  few 
fundamental  conceptions  are  shown  to  be  sovereign 
throughout  the  whole  sphere  of  being.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  of  Browning  that  of  all  English  poets  he 
has  rationalized  life  most  thoroughly.  In  the  range 
of  his  interests  and  the  scope  of  his  thought  he  is  a 
man  of  Shakespearian  mould.  If  his  art  matched 
Shakespeare's,  we  should  have  in  him  the  realization 
of  Emerson's  dream  of  the  poet-priest,  "  a  reconciler, 
who  shall  not  trifle  with  Shakespeare  the  player, 
nor    shall    grope    in  graves    with    Swedenborg    the 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  Ill 

mourner;   but  who  shall  see,  speak,  and   act  with 
equal  inspiration." 

The  philosopher  in  Browning  sometimes  usurps  the 
functions  of  the  artist ;  and  the  thought  misses  that 
flash  and  play  of  the  shaping  imagination  which 
would  have  given  it  the  elusive  poetic  quality.  But 
for  the  most  part  it  is  the  artist  who  deals  with  the 
crude  materials  of  life  and  gives  them,  not  plastic, 
but  dramatic  unity  and  beauty.  Other  poets  give  us 
glimpses  of  the  highest  truth ;  Browning  gives  some- 
thing near  a  complete  vision  of  it.  Shelley  summons 
the  elemental  forces  out  of  the  formless  depths,  and 
they  pass  before  us  —  ocean,  sky,  wind,  and  cloud  — 
as  they  passed  by  Prometheus  ages  ago ;  Keats  re- 
calls the  vanished  loveliness  "of  marble  men  and 
maidens  overwrought,  with  forest  branches  and  the 
trodden  weed ; "  Wordsworth  matches  the  evening 
star,  moving  solitary  along  the  edges  of  the  hills, 
with  a  phrase  as  pure  and  high.  But  in  Browning's 
wide  outlook  all  these  partial  visions  are  included. 
He  too  can  brood,  with  Paracelsus,  over  the  invisible 
and  fathomless  sea  of  force,  on  whose  bosom  our 
little  world  floats  like  the  shining  crest  of  a  wave ;  he 
too,  with  Cleon,  can  summon  ba^k  that  perfection  of 
form  whose  secret  perished  with  the  hands  that  could 
illustrate  but  never  reveal  it ;  he  too,  with  David, 
borne,  he  knows  not  how,  from  the  vision  of  the  far- 
off  Christ,  can  feel  Nature  throbbing  with  the  beat 
of  his  own  heart,  and  the  very  stars  tingling  in  the 
sudden  and  limitless  expansion  of  his  own  conscious- 


112      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

ness.  If  in  all  these  varied  insights  and  experiences 
he  fails  to  secure  the  perfection  of  form  with  which 
each  great  poet  matches  his  peculiar  and  characteris- 
tic message,  there  is  certainly  compensation  in  the 
immensity  of  outlook  which  includes  these  isolated 
scenes  as  a  great  landscape  holds  within  its  limits 
fertile  field  and  sterile  barrenness,  glimpse  of  sea 
and  depth  of  forest,  familiar  village  street  and  remote 
mountain  fastness,  losing  something  of  definiteness 
and  beauty  of  detail  from  each,  but  gaining  the  sub- 
limity and  completeness  of  half  a  continent. 

Browning's  life  and  work  were  never  at  odds,  nor 
was  there  ever  any  serious  change  in  his  methods 
and  principles.  Born  in  1812,  he  published  his  first 
poem,  "Pauline,"  in  1832,  at  the  age  of  twenty. 
From  that  time  until  the  year  of  his  death  there  came 
an  almost  unbroken  series  of  works  from  his  hand ; 
they  appeared  at  irregular  intervals,  but  they  evi- 
dently represent  a  continuous  and  harmonious  unfold- 
ing of  his  life.  He  did  not  begin  by  trying  his  hand 
at  various  instruments,  searching  for  that  which 
should  match  his  native  gifts ;  nor  did  he  grope 
among  different  themes  for  one  that  should  vitalize 
his  imagination.  On  the  contrary,  the  dramatic 
quality  of  his  genius  discovers  itself  in  "  Pauline," 
from  which,  by  a  natural  development,  both  the 
drama  and  the  monologue  of  later  years  were 
evolved ;  while  in  the  matter  of  themes  it  is  clear  that 
he  never  waited  for  the  fitting  and  inspiring  motive, 
but  vitalized,  by  the  virile  force  of  his  own  nature, 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 13 

such  subjects  as  came  to  hand.  Following  the  course 
of  his  development  from  "  Pauline "  through  the 
dramas,  the  lyrics,  the  monologues,  "The  Ring  and 
the  Book,"  to  "  Asolando,"  no  student  of  Browning 
can  mistake  the  great  lines  of  his  thought,  nor  fail  to 
see  that  thought  expanded  out  of  thought  until  there 
lies  in  these  varied  and  voluminous  works  an  orderly 
and  rational  world  of  idea,  emotion,  and  action. 
Nor  will  one  have  gone  far  without  discovering  that 
he  is  in  a  new  world,  and  that  the  man  who  journeys 
beside  him  is  in  some  sense  a  discoverer  and  ex- 
plorer. Such  an  one  may  sometimes  blaze  his  path 
in  the  enthusiasm  and  haste  of  the  search,  and  leave 
for  others  the  building  of  the  highway  which  shall  be 
easy  to  the  feet  of  the  multitude.  Coming  to  man- 
hood at  a  time  when  splendid  dreams  were  in  the 
minds  of  poets,  and  glowing  prophecies  on  their 
lips,  Browning  held  resolutely  to  the  actual  as  he  saw 
it  about  him ;  that  noble  work  of  his  early  maturity, 
"  Paracelsus,"  marks,  with  unerring  precision,  the 
limits  of  human  achievement.  Living  on  into  a 
period  in  which  for  the  moment  the  aggressive  energy 
of  the  scientific  spirit  has  almost  discredited  the 
authority  of  the  imagination,  Browning  held  with 
equal  resolution  to  the  real  as  the  completion  and 
explanation  of  the  actual ;  to  the  spiritual  as  the  key 
to  the  material. 

This  repose  of  mind  in  an  age  when  many  minds 
float  with  the  shifting  tides  of  current  opinion,  this 
undisturbed    balance   maintained   between  the   two 
8 


114     ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

contrasted  facts  of  life,  show  how  clearly  Browning 
thought  his  way  out  of  the  confusion  of  appearances 
and  illusions  into  the  realm  of  reality,  and  how  truly 
he  is  a  master  of  life  and  its  arts.  One  will  look 
through  his  verse  in  vain  for  any  criticism  of  the 
order  of  the  universe,  for  any  arraignment  of  the 
wisdom  which  established  the  boundaries  and  defined 
the  methods  of  human  life ;  one  will  find  no  lament 
that  certain  ages  and  races  have  gone,  and  their  gifts 
perished  with  them,  that  change  has  transformed 
the  world,  and  that  out  of  this  familiar  present  we 
are  swept  onward  into  the  dim  and  chill  unknown. 
Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  does  one  discover  here  the 
renunciation  of  the  ascetic,  the  unhealthy  detachment 
from  life  of  the  fanatic,  the  repose  of  the  mystic  from 
whose  feet,  waiting  at  the  gate  of  Paradise,  the  world 
has  rolled  away.  Browning  was  a  man  of  the  world 
in  the  noble  sense,  —  that  sense  in  which  the  saints  of 
the  future  are  to  be  heart  and  soul  one  with  their 
fellows.  He  sees  clearly  that  this  present  is  not  to 
be  put  by  for  any  future ;  that  there  is  no  future  save 
in  this  present.  Other  poets  have  chosen  their  paths 
through  the  vast  growths  of  life,  and,  by  virtue  of 
some  principle  of  selection  and  exclusion,  made  a 
way  for  themselves.  But  Browning  surrendered 
nothing ;  he  would  take  life  as  a  whole,  or  he  would 
reject  it.  He  refused  to  be  consoled  by  ignoring 
certain  classes  of  facts,  or  to  be  satisfied  with  frag- 
ments pieced  together  after  some  design  of  his  own. 
He  must  have  a  vision  of  all  the  facts ;  and,  giving 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  115 

each  its  weight  and  place,  he  must  make  his  peace 
with  them,  or  else  chaos  and  death  are  the  only  cer- 
tainties. It  is  only  the  great  souls  that  thus  wrestle 
the  whole  night  through,  and  will  not  rest  until  God 
has  revealed,  not  indeed  his  own  name,  but  the 
name  by  which  they  shall  henceforth  know  that  he 
has  spoken  to  them,  and  that  the  universe  is  no 
longer  voiceless  and  godless. 

Professor  Dowden,  in  his  admirable  contrast  of 
Tennyson  and  Browning,  has  made  it  clear  that 
while  the  Laureate  sees  life  on  the  orderly  and  institu- 
tional side,  Browning  sees  it  on  its  spontaneous  and 
inspirational  side.  The  one  seeks  the  explanation  of 
the  mysteries  which  surround  him,  and  the  processes 
by  which  life  is  unfolded,  in  the  slow,  large  move- 
ment of  law;  the  other  goes  straight  to  the  centre 
whence  the  energy  of  life  flows.  Society  is  much  to 
Browning,  not  because  it  teaches  great  truths,  but 
because  it  reveals  the  force  and  direction  of  individ- 
ual impulse.  Tennyson  continually  moves  away  from 
the  individual  emotion  and  experience  to  that  wider 
movement  in  which  it  shall  mix  and  lose  itself;  the 
fragment  of  a  life  gaining  dignity  and  completeness 
by  blending  with  the  whole.  Browning,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  virtue  of  the  immense  importance  he  at- 
taches to  personality,  is  continually  striving  to  dis- 
cover in  the  individual  the  potency  and  direction  of 
the  general  movement.  Every  life  is  a  revelation  to 
him ;  every  life  is  a  channel  through  which  a  new 
force  pours  into  the  world. 


Il6      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Browning  always  refused  to  break  life  up  into  frag- 
ments, to  use  one  set  of  faculties  to  the  exclusion 
of  another  set,  to  accept  half  truths  for  the  whole 
truth.  He  discovers  truth  not  only  by  the  processes 
of  intellectual  inquiry,  but  through  the  joy  and  pain 
of  the  senses,  the  mystery  of  love,  loss,  suffering, 
conquest;  by  the  use,  in  a  word,  of  his  whole  per- 
sonality. Life  and  the  universe  are  to  teach  him, 
and  he  is  in  their  presence  to  learn  through  the 
whole  range  of  his  being ;  to  be  taught  quite  as  much 
unconsciously  as  consciously;  above  all  things,  to 
grow  into  truth.  To  reveal  truth  is,  in  his  concep- 
tion, the  supreme  function  of  the  visible  world,  —  a 
process  as  natural  to  it  as  the  growth  of  trees  or  the 
blossoming  of  flowers.  To  learn  is  the  normal  ac- 
tivity and  function  of  the  human  soul.  Together,  for 
ages  past,  the  universe  and  the  spirit  of  man  have 
confronted  each  other  in  a  mighty  and  far-reaching 
struggle  of  the  one  to  impart  and  the  other  to  receive ; 
until,  invisibly  as  the  dew  falls  on  the  blade  of  grass, 
there  descends  into  human  lives  truth  after  truth  ac- 
cording to  their  capacity.  Not  by  searching  alone,  but 
by  patient  waiting  as  well ;  not  by  intellectual  pro- 
cesses alone,  but  by  obscure  processes  of  heart ;  not 
by  conquest  only,  but  by  growth,  —  has  life  cleared  itself 
to  the  thought  of  men.  The  germs  of  all  truth  lie  in 
the  soul ;  and  when  the  ripe  moment  comes,  the  truth 
within  answers  to  the  fact  without  as  the  flower  responds 
to  the  sun,  giving  it  form  for  heat  and  colour  for 
light.     It  follows  from  Browning's  refusal  to  break  up 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  UJ 

life  into  fragments,  that  he  never  dissociates  knowl- 
edge and  art  from  life  ;  they  are  always  one  in  his 
thought  and  one  in  his  work.  Knowledge  is  never 
attainment  or  conquest  with  him ;  it  is  always  life  ex- 
panded to  a  certain  limit  of  truth.  Paracelsus  fails 
because  the  volume  of  his  life  is  not  wide  and  deep 
enough  to  receive  into  itself  the  truth  to  which  he 
aspires.  Truth  does  not  exist  for  us  until  it  is  part 
of  our  life ;  until  we  have  made  it  ours  by  absorption 
and  assimilation.  This  is  essentially  a  modern  idea ; 
modern  as  compared  with  the  mediaeval  conception 
of  knowledge.  For  as  Herder  long  ago  saw,  before 
the  scientific  movement  had  really  begun,  all  depart- 
ments of  knowledge  are  vitally  related  ;  so  far  as  they 
touch  man's  life,  they  are  parts  of  a  common  revela- 
tion of  his  history  and  his  soul.  The  study  of  the 
structure  of  language  leads  to  philology;  and  phi- 
lology opens  the  path  into  mythology ;  and  mythology 
ends  in  a  science  of  comparative  religion  and  the 
deepest  questions  of  philosophy.  Literature  is  no 
longer  an  isolated  art  through  which  the  genius  of  a 
few  select  souls  reveals  itself;  it  is  the  deep,  often 
unconscious  overflow  and  outcry  of  life  rising  as  the 
mists  rise  out  of  the  universal  seas.  Art  is  no  longer 
an  artifice,  a  conscious  evolution  of  personal  gift  and 
grace  ;  it  is  the  Ideal  that  was  in  the  heart  of  a  race 
finding  here  and  there  a  soul  sensitive  enough  to  feel 
its  subtile  inspiration,  and  a  hand  sure  enough  to  give 
it  form.  Whoever  studies  the  Parthenon  studies  not 
only   Athenian  genius,  but,  pre-eminently,  Athenian 


Jl8      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

character  in  its  clearest  manifestation ;  whoever 
knows  English  literature  knows  the  English  race. 

This  conception  of  civilization  and  its  arts  as  a 
growth,  as  an  indivisible  whole  in  all  its  manysided- 
ness,  as  vitally  related  to  the  soul,  as,  indeed,  the  soul 
externalized,  is  the  most  fruitful  and  organic  of  all 
the  truths  which  have  come  into  the  possession  of 
the  modern  world. 

This  truth  Browning,  more  than  any  other  poet, 
has  mastered  and  applied  to  life  and  art.  He  sees 
the  entire  movement  of  civilization  as  a  continuous 
and  living  growth  ;  and  from  it  as  a  revelation,  from 
Nature  and  from  the  individual  soul,  his  large  and 
noble  conception  of  life  has  grown.  That  conception 
involves  a  living  relationship  between  the  individual 
and  its  entire  environment  of  material  universe, 
human  fellowship,  and  divine  impulse.  Everything 
converges  upon  personality,  and  the  key  of  the  whole 
vast  movement  of  things  is  to  be  found  in  character ; 
in  character  not  as  a  set  of  habits  and  methods,  but 
as  a  final  decision,  a  permanent  tendency  and  direc- 
tion, a  last  and  irrevocable  choice.  From  Browning's 
standpoint  life  is  explicable  only  as  it  is  seen  in  its 
entirety,  death  being  an  incident  in  its  dateless 
being.  Full  of  undeveloped  power,  possibility,  growth, 
men  are  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  world  in  which 
they  find  themselves  by  a  clear,  definite  perception  of 
the  highest,  remotest  spiritual  end,  and  by  a  consist- 
ent and  resolute  use  of  all  things  to  bear  them  for- 
ward to  that  end.     Browning  does  not  believe  for  an 


ROBER  T  BRO  WNING.  1 1 9 

instant  that  human  life  as  he  finds  it  about  him  is  a 
failure,  or  that  the  present  order  of  things  is  a  virtual 
confession  on  the  part  of  Deity  that  the  human  race, 
by  a  wholly  unexpected  evolution  of  evil,  have  com- 
pelled a  modification  of  the  original  order,  and  a  tacit 
compromise  with  certain  malign  powers  which,  under 
a  normal  evolution,  would  have  no  place  here.  On 
the  contrary,  he  believes  that  the  infinite  wisdom 
which  imposed  the  conditions  upon  which  every  man 
accepts  his  life  justifies  itself  in  the  marvelous  adap- 
tation of  the  material  means  to  the  spiritual  ends ; 
and  that  it  is  only  as  we  accept  resolutely  and  fear- 
lessly the  order  of  which  we  are  part  that  we  see 
clearly  the  "  far-off,  divine  event  to  which  the  whole 
creation  moves." 

To  Tennyson  the  path  of  highest  development  is  to 
be  found  in  submission  and  obedience  ;  to  Browning 
the  same  end  is  to  be  sought  by  that  sublime  enthu- 
siasm which  bears  the  soul  beyond  the  discipline  that 
is  shaping  it  to  a  unity  and  fellowship  with  the  divine 
will  which  imposes  the  discipline.  We  are  to  suffer 
and  bear,  to  submit  and  endure,  not  passively,  with 
gentle  patience  and  trust,  but  actively,  with  co-oper- 
ative energy  of  will  and  joy  of  insight  into  the  far-off 
end.  Life  is  so  much  more  than  its  conditions  and 
accidents  that,  like  the  fruitful  Nile,  it  overflows  and 
fertilizes  them  all.  It  is  this  intense  vitality  which 
holds  Browning  in  such  real  and  wholesome  relations 
with  the  whole  movement  of  Nature  and  life ;  which 
makes  it  impossible  to  discard  anything  which  God 


120      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

has  made.  If  further  proof  of  his  possession  of  genius 
were  needed,  it  would  be  furnished  by  this  supreme 
characteristic  of  his  nature ;  he  is  so  intensely  alive. 
Few  men  have  the  strength  to  live  in  more  than  two 
or  three  directions.  They  are  alive  to  philosophy  and 
what  they  regard  as  religion,  and  dead  to  science,  to 
art,  to  the  great  movements  of  human  society ;  or  they 
are  alive  to  science,  to  art,  and  dead  to  philosophy  and 
religion.  Genius  is  intensity  of  life,  —  an  overflowing 
vitality  which  floods  and  fertilizes  a  continent  or  a 
hemisphere  of  being ;  which  makes  a  nature  many- 
sided  and  whole,  while  most  men  remain  partial  and 
fragmentary.  This  inexhaustible  vitality  pours  like  a 
tide  through  all  Browning's  work;  so  swift  and 
tumultuous  is  it  that  it  sometimes  carries  all  manner 
of  debris  with  it,  and  one  must  wait  long  for  the 
settling  of  the  sediment  and  the  clarification  of  the 
stream. 

This  vitality  makes  it  impossible  for  Browning, 
great  spiritual  prophet  that  he  is,  to  mutilate  life ;  to 
reject  a  part  of  it  under  a  false  conception  of  the  unity 
and  indivisibility  of  the  whole.  No  man  has  a  more 
subtile  perception  of  the  most  obscure  and  complex 
spiritual  experiences  than  the  author  of  "  Paracelsus  " 
and  the  "  Strange  Medical  Experience  of  Karshish, 
the  Arab  Physician,"  and  yet  none  has  greater  keen- 
ness and  joy  of  sense.  The  world  as  it  lies  in  its  first 
swift  impression  on  his  soul  is  as  divine  a  world  as 
that  which  he  finds  when,  probed  to  the  bottom,  it 
discovers  a  sublime  harmony  and  purpose.     Chaucer 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  121 

did  not  find  skies  bluer,  flowers  more  fragrant,  than 
this  nineteenth-century  poet;  Theocritus  himself, 
lulled  by  the  hum  of  the  summer  bee  and  the  fall  of 
the  pine-cone,  was  not  more  responsive  to  the  first, 
immediate  beauty  of  Nature  than  this  deep  thinker 
within  whose  vision  there  also  lies  that  ethereal  and 
transcendent  beauty  which  never  deepened  the  skies 
of  Sicily  for  the  elder  singer.  Whosoever  would 
possess  his  life  wholly  must  live  richly,  joyously,  and 
victoriously  in  this  present :  — 

"  I  find  earth  not  gray  but  rosy, 
Heaven  not  grim  but  fair  of  hue. 
Do  I  stoop  ?    I  pluck  a  posy. 

Do  I  stand  and  stare  ?    All 's  blue." 

The  young  David,  preparing  for  the  mightiest  hercu- 
lean labours,  for  the  sublimest  prophetic  visions,  mixes 
his  life  with  the  splendid  play  of  life  about  him,  and 
breeds  joy  and  buoyant  strength  in  the  commingling : 

"Oh,  our  manhood's  prime  vigour  !     No  spirit  feels  waste, 
Not  a  muscle  is  stopped  in  its  playing  nor  sinew  unbraced. 
Oh,  the  wild  joys  of  living!  the  leaping  from  rock  up  to  rock, 
The  strong  rending  of  boughs  from  the  fir-tree,  the  cool  silver 

shock 
Of  the  plunge  in  a  pool's  living  water,  the  hunt  of  the  bear, 
And  the  sultriness  showing  the  lion  is  couched  in  his  lair. 
And  the  meal,  the  rich  dates  yellowed  over  with  gold-dust 

divine, 
And  the  locust-flesh  steeped  in  the  pitcher,  the  full  draught 

of  wine, 
And  the  sleep  in  the  dried  river  channel  where  bulrushes  tell 
That  the  water  was  wont  to  go  warbling  so  softly  and  well. 


122      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living  !  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  forever  in  joy." 

In  "  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  —  that  complete  and  noble 
exposition  of  the  philosophy  of  life  as  Browning 
understands  it,  —  the  wholeness  and  the  healthfulness 
of  a  rounded  and  full-pulsed  life  are  distinctly  and 
unmistakably  affirmed :  — 

"  Yet  gifts  should  prove  their  use : 

I  own  the  past  profuse 
Of  power  each  side,  perfection  every  turn 

Eyes,  ears  took  in  their  dole, 

Brain  treasured  up  the  whole  ; 
Should  not  the  heart  beat  once  '  How  good  to  live  and  learn  '  ? 

"  Not  once  beat '  Praise  be  Thine  I 

I  see  the  whole  design, 
I,  who  saw  Power,  see  now  Love  perfect  too: 

Perfect  I  call  Thy  plan  : 

Thanks  that  I  was  a  man  I 
Maker,  remake,  complete,  —  I  trust  what  Thou  shalt  do  I ' 

"  Let  us  not  always  say 

'  Spite  of  this  flesh  to-day 
I  strove,  made  head,  gained  ground  upon  the  whole  I ' 

As  the  bird  wings  and  sings, 

Let  us  cry  'All  good  things 
Are  ours,  nor  soul  helps  flesh  more,  now,  than  flesh  helps  soul ! ' 

"  As  it  was  better,  youth 

Should  strive,  through  acts  uncouth, 
Toward  making,  than  repose  on  aught  found  made : 

So,  better,  age,  exempt 

From  strife,  should  know,  than  tempt 
Further.     Thou  waitedst  age  :  wait  death,  nor  be  afraid." 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 23 

Taking  up  the  figure  of  the  potter's  wheel,  the  poet 
adds,  — 

"  He  fixed  thee  'mid  this  dance 

Of  plastic  circumstance, 
This  Present,  thou,  forsooth,  wouldst  fain  arrest : 

Machinery  just  meant 

To  give  thy  soul  its  bent, 
Try  thee,  and  turn  thee  forth  sufficiently  impressed. 

"  What  though  the  earlier  grooves 

Which  ran  the  laughing  loves 
Around  thy  base,  no  longer  pause  and  press  ? 

What  though,  about  thy  rim, 

Skull-things  in  order  grim 
Grow  out,  in  graver  mood  obey  the  sterner  stress  ? 

"  Look  thou  not  down  but  up  ! 
To  uses  of  a  cup, 
The  festal  board,  lamp's  flash,  and  trumpet's  peal, 
The  new  wine's  foaming  flow, 
The  Master's  lips  aglow  I 
Thou,  heaven's  consummate  cup,  what  needst  thou  with  earth's 
wheel  ? 

"  So,  take  and  use  thy  work : 

Amend  what  flaws  may  lurk, 
What  strain  o'  the  stuff,  what  warpings  past  the  aim  ! 

My  times  be  in  Thy  hand  ! 

Perfect  the  cup  as  planned  ! 
Let  age  approve  of  youth,  and  death  complete  the  same." 

The  fullest  spiritual  development  involves  this  joy- 
ous acceptance  of  present  methods  and  instrumen- 
talities of  growth  and  action ;  to  ignore,  undervalue, 
or  corrupt  them  is  to  miss  the  very  thing  for  which 


124      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

they  were  ordained.  One  cannot  force  the  process 
of  growth  by  endeavouring  to  escape  from  the  con- 
ditions of  this  present  life  into  the  region  of  the 
unconditioned  ;  neither  by  renunciation  nor  by  search- 
ing can  the  laws  which  determine  the  unfolding  of 
a  soul  into  power  and  light  be  modified,  or  their 
movement  accelerated. 

On  the  other  hand,  one  must  not  for  an  instant 
rest  in  the  life  that  now  is,  nor  in  any  of  its  joys,  its 
arts,  its  achievements;  there  must  be  an  habitual 
and  unfailing  perception  of  the  difference  between 
the  use  and  thing  used.  He  only  truly  lives  to  whom 
the  falling  of  the  leaf  and  the  fading  of  the  flower 
are  joyous  and  not  grievous,  because  they  speak  of 
a  larger  and  more  continuous  fertility ;  to  whom  art, 
when  it  has  matched  its  divinest  vision  with  faultless 
workmanship,  is  still  only  an  unfulfilled  prophecy  of 
that  beauty  which  is  never  wholly  present  in  any 
work  of  human  hands  and  never  wholly  absent  from  any 
noble  human  soul.  One  ceases  to  grow  the  instant  he 
takes  a  thing  for  itself,  and  not  for  its  use,  —  the  instant 
he  detaches  it  from  the  power  which  sustains  and 
spiritualizes  it.  To  rest  in  any  joy  of  the  senses  or 
any  achievement  of  the  intellect  is  to  become  cor- 
rupt and  to  corrupt  the  good  gifts  of  life.  It  is 
the  acceptance  of  things  for  themselves,  or  for  their 
uses,  which  determines  character,  fixes  destiny;  at 
these  points  of  choice  life  culminates  from  time  to 
time  in  grand  progressions  or  in  fateful  retrogressions, 
in  illuminating  flashes  which  make  the  horizon  shine 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 25 

with  the  glory  beyond,  or  in  awful  and  permanent 
recession  of  light,  in  awful  and  lasting  advance  of 
darkness.  These  are  the  supreme  moments  in  which 
the  soul  sees  in  swift  glance  the  entirety  of  its  life, 
and  the  sublime  harmony  of  the  universe  breaks 
upon  it  in  ineffable  vision :  — 

"  Oh,  we  're  sunk  enough  here,  God  knows  ! 
But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure  tho'  seldom,  are  denied  us, 

When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 

And  apprise  it  if  pursuing 
Or  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way, 
To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 

"There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnights, 

There  are  fire-flames  noondays  kindle, 
Whereby  piled-up  honours  perish, 

Whereby  swollen  ambitions  dwindle ; 
While  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse, 

Which  for  once  had  play  unstifled, 
Seems  the  sole  work  of  a  lifetime 

That  away  the  rest  have  trifled." 

Without  this  clear  perception  of  its  larger  uses, 
knowledge  itself  becomes  a  snare  to  the  soul;  it 
conceals  instead  of  revealing  the  secret  of  life. 
Boundless  aspiration  and  desire  for  nobler  life  must 
drain  the  cup  of  knowledge,  but  never  rest  in  study 
of  its  curious  tracery,  its  rich  and  varied  design. 
The  cup  once  drained  of  the  life  that  was  in  it  must 
be  cast  aside,  as  the  eager  searcher  goes  on  his  way 
refreshed.     Browning   has  made  this  conception  of 


126      ESS  A  YS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  meaning  of  life  nowhere  so  clear  as  in  that  noble 
group  of  poems  which  have  art  as  their  theme.  Cer- 
tainly no  poet  has  ever  had  a  deeper  thought  of  the 
functions  and  limitations  of  art ;  none  has  ever  seen 
more  clearly  the  beauty  of  the  art  which  died  with 
the  Greeks,  not  because  the  soul  parted  with  some 
endowment  when  that  wonderful  race  perished,  but 
because  life  has  expanded  beyond  the  capacity  of 
the  exquisite  chalice  in  which  the  Greek  poured 
his  genius  as  a  gift  to  the  gods.  That  art  attained 
its  perfection  of  form,  because  from  the  conception 
of  life  which  pervaded  it  the  spiritual  was  resolutely 
rejected.  The  life  that  now  is  came  to  perfect  ex- 
pression under  the  Greek  chisel  and  the  Greek  stylus ; 
but  this  very  perfection  was  its  limitation.  In  the 
art  which  shall  reveal  life  in  its  large  spiritual  rela- 
tions, life  in  its  infinite  duration  and  growth,  there 
must  be  imperfection,  —  the  imperfection,  not  of  in- 
adequate workmanship,  but  of  a  thought  not  yet 
pressed  to  its  last  conclusion,  of  a  conception  still  to 
broaden  and  deepen.  Antique  art  found  its  supreme 
function  in  the  faultless  representation  of  complete 
and  finished  ideals,  —  ideals  which  secured  completion 
and  definiteness  of  outline  by  the  rejection  of  the 
spiritual.  Modern  art  will  find  its  supreme  function 
in  the  noble  expression  of  that  unsatisfied  aspiration 
of  the  soul  which  craves  and  creates  beauty,  but 
never  for  a  moment  deceives  itself  with  the  thought 
of  finality  or  perfection.  This  thought  of  the  office 
and  work  of  art  Browning  has  illustrated  again  and 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 27 

again  with  marvellous  beauty  and  power.  In  "  Andrea 
del  Sarto,"  the  painter  of  the  perfect  line,  the  failure 
of  the  artist  is  evidenced  by  the  faultlessness  of 
manner  which  he  has  attained :  — 

"  Yonder 's  a  work  now,  of  that  famous  youth 
The  Urbinate  who  died  five  years  ago. 
('Tis  copied,  George  Vasari  sent  it  me.) 
Well,  I  can  fancy  how  he  did  it  all, 
Pouring  his  soul,  with  kings  and  popes  to  see, 
Reaching,  that  Heaven  might  so  replenish  him, 
Above  and  through  his  art  —  for  it  gives  way ; 
That  arm  is  wrongly  put  —  and  there  again  — 
A  fault  to  pardon  in  the  drawing's  lines, 
Its  body,  so  to  speak  :  its  soul  is  right, 
He  means  right  —  that,  a  child  may  understand. 
Still,  what  an  arm  !  and  I  could  alter  it : 
But  all  the  play,  the  insight  and  the  stretch  — 
Out  of  me,  out  of  me  I " 

The  duke,  as  he  lifts  the  curtain  which  conceals  the 
matchless  portrait  of  the  "  Last  Duchess,"  whose  life- 
fountain  of  joy  ceased  to  overflow  in  smiles  when  his 
command  suddenly  congealed  it,  is  an  unerring  judge 
of  the  technique  of  art,  but  to  its  spirit  he  is  as  dead 
as  the  ashes  he  calls  his  soul.  The  real  artist  is 
never  content,  however  his  genius  display  its  splendid 
strength ;  he  presses  on,  unsatisfied,  to  that  perfect 
Ideal  of  which  all  works  of  human  hands  are  imper- 
fect transcriptions.  Abt  Vogler  touches  his  organ- 
keys,  and  straightway  an  invisible  temple  springs,  arch 
upon  arch,  in  the  vision  of  his  imagination,  and 
through  it,  as  through  the  Beautiful  Gate  of  the  older 


128      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

shrine,  he  passes  into  the  presence  of  One  who  is  the 
builder  and  maker  of  houses  not  made  with  hands. 
To  reach  that  Presence,  to  make  it  real  and  abiding 
in  the  thoughts  of  men,  is  the  true  office  and  service 
of  art. 

As  Browning  interprets  art,  so  does  he  see  Nature. 
When  he  chooses  to  study  and  describe  landscape  in 
detail,  as  in  "The  Englishman  in  Italy,"  no  poet  has 
a  more  exact  and  faithful  touch,  a  more  sensitive  per- 
ception of  the  thousand  and  one  details  which  each 
contribute  a  charm,  an  effect,  to  the  completed  pic- 
ture. No  man  understands  more  perfectly  that  the 
mind  is  made  to  see  an  invisible  landscape,  not  by 
enumeration  of  details,  but  by  the  few  fit  words  that 
fire  the  imagination.  But  for  the  most  part  Brown- 
ing conceives  of  Nature  as  a  vast  symbol  of  spiritual 
force,  and  describes  it  broadly,  not  as  a  thing  apart 
from  human  life,  but  as  responsive  to  the  soul  in  its 
moments  of  exaltation.  The  curtain  which  hangs 
between  God  and  his  creatures  is  swayed  by  many  an 
invisible  current  of  impulse  and  influence,  —  becomes 
at  times  almost  transparent  to  an  eye  that  "  hath 
looked  on  man's  mortality."  In  those  supreme 
moments  when  life  touches  its  highest  altitudes,  as 
when  David  leaves  the  presence  of  Saul,  Nature 
seems  to  be  on  the  verge  of  swift  transformation  into 
some  spiritual  medium  and  substance,  so  intensely 
does  the  soul  project  itself  into  all  visible  things,  so 
alive  and  responsive  are  all  visible  things  to  the  tran- 
scendent mood  and  revelation  of  the  hour.     In  the 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  129 

long  range  of  life  the  material  universe  is  seen  to  be 
plastic  and  takes  on  the  hue  and  form  of  thought, 
answering  the  soul  as  the  body  responds  to  the  mind. 
Nature  is  vitalized  by  a  power  greater  than  itself;  and 
through  the  majesty  of  its  elemental  forms,  —  its  seas 
and  mountains  and  continents,  —  as  well  as  through 
its  finer  and  more  ethereal  aspects,  —  its  flowers, 
its  clouds,  its  sunrises  and  sunsets,  —  God  presses 
upon  the  spirit  of  man;  and  in  the  hours  when 
that  spirit  aspires  highest  and  acts  noblest,  this 
vast  appearance  of  things  material  is  touched  and 
spiritualized. 

Browning's  habitual  method  of  dealing  with  the 
personal  soul  is  to  reveal  it  by  some  swift  crisis,  by 
some  tremendous  temptation,  by  some  supreme  expe- 
rience, under  the  pressure  of  which  its  strength  or  its 
weakness,  its  nobility  or  its  baseness,  are  brought  out 
as  by  a  flash  of  lightning.  Life  is  never  life  to  him 
except  in  those  hours  when  it  rises  to  a  complete  out- 
pouring of  itself.  To  live  is  to  experience  intensely. 
No  poet  is  so  intensely  Occidental  as  Browning ;  so 
far  removed  from  the  Oriental  conception  of  the  world 
as  an  illusion,  of  desire  and  will  as  snares  and  evils,  of 
effacement  of  personality  as  the  chief  aim  and  end  of 
human  existence.  Browning  holds  to  personality  so 
resolutely  that  he  constructs  life  along  this  central 
conception :  in  his  view  the  supreme  end  of  being  is 
to  bring  out  whatever  lies  undeveloped  within;  to 
seek  action,  to  strive  after  love  and  opportunity,  and 
find  an  unspeakable  joy  even  in  the  anguish  which 
9 


13°      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

does  not  extinguish,  but  elevates  and  purifies  desire. 
It  was  inevitable,  therefore,  that  the  master-passion 
of  life  should  find  at  his  hands  noble  and  varied  ex- 
pression. It  is  safe  to  say  that  no  English  poet  has 
matched  the  sovereign  passion  of  love  with  so  many 
and  such  wholly  adequate  forms.  Indeed,  when  one 
has  grasped  Browning's  idea  of  love  as  the  fulfilment 
of  life,  there  are  few  other  poets  who  seem  to  have 
touched  the  theme  with  anything  approaching  mastery. 
That  other  poet,  whose  star-like  soul  moves  with  his 
forever  in  a  common  orbit,  could  have  left  no  more 
beautiful  revelation  of  her  own  nature  than  that  which 
shines  and  glows  in  Browning's  thought  of  love.  In 
"Youth  and  Art,"  in  "Colombe's  Birthday,"  in 
"The  Inn  Album,"  in  "The  Ring  and  the  Book," 
in  those  noble  self- confessions,  "One  Word  More,"  and 
"  By  the  Fireside,"  in  a  hundred  other  poems,  it  is 
made  clear  that  life  touches  its  zenith  only  as  it 
surrenders  itself  to  a  passion  whose  spiritual  fervour 
burns  aways  all  selfishness  and  makes  it  one  with 
whatever  is  eternal  and  divine.  He  who  fails  to 
make  the  last  venture,  to  hazard  all  for  the  possible 
possession  of  heaven,  may  gain  everything  else,  but 
has  miserably  and  finally  failed ;  he  has  missed  the 
one  supreme  hour  when  life  would  have  been  re- 
vealed to  him.  So  profoundly  is  the  poet  possessed 
by  the  necessity  of  surrendering  one's  self  to  the 
highest  impulses  that  occasionally,  as  in  "  The 
Statue  and  the  Bust,"  this  thought  dominates  and 
excludes  all  other  considerations,   and   stamps  the 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  131 

ungirt  loin  and  the  unlit  lamp  as  the  supreme  and 
irrevocable  sin  against  life. 

In  Browning's  conception  of  the  place  of  person- 
ality it  was  foreordained  that  his  genius  should  be 
dramatic ;  should  deal  with  situations  and  characters, 
and  rarely  with  abstractions.  Thought,  in  his  view, 
has  not  come  to  complete  consciousness  until  it  has 
borne  the  fruit  of  action.  From  "  Pauline  "  to  the 
epilogue  in  "  Parleyings "  it  is  always  a  person 
who  speaks,  and  rarely  the  poet;  the  latter  keeps 
himself  out  of  sight  by  the  instinct  which  is  a  part  of 
his  gift.  The  subtile  genius  of  a  poet  whose  mastery 
of  psychology  is  universally  recognized  has  marvellous 
power  of  penetrating  the  secret  of  natures  widely 
dissimilar,  and  of  experiences  which  have  little  in 
common  save  that  they  are  a  part  of  life.  No  poet 
has  ever  surpassed  Browning  in  this  spiritual  clairvoy- 
ance or  mind-reading,  which  has  made  it  possible  for 
him  to  give  us  the  very  spirit  of  the  Greek  decadence 
in  "  Cleon ;  "  the  subtile,  confused,  but  marvellously 
interesting  spirit  of  the  Renaissance  in  "  The  Bishop 
orders  his  Tomb ;  "  the  soul  of  debased  medievalism 
in  "The  Soliloquy  of  the  Spanish  Cloister;  "  the  first 
dim  perception  of  religious  ideas  in  a  possible 
primitive  man  in  "  Caliban  upon  Setebos."  All 
Browning's  poems  are  dramatic,  and  all  his  dramas 
are  dramas  of  the  soul.  In  "  Paracelsus,"  in 
"Luria,"  in  "Sordello,"  in  "The  Ring  and  the 
Book,"  action  is  used,  not  for  dramatic  effect,  but  to 
reveal  the  soul ;  and  only   those  who  have  carefully 


1 3  2      ESS  A  YS  IN  LI  TERAR  Y  INTERPRE  TA  TION. 

studied  these  works  know  what  astonishing  power  is 
embodied  in  them,  what  marvellous  subtilty  of  analy- 
sis, what  masterly  grouping  and  interplay  of  motives, 
what  overflowing  and  apparently  inexhaustible  force 
and  vitality  of  mind.  In  one  of  his  luminous  gener- 
alizations Goethe  says  that  thought  expands,  but 
weakens ;  while  action  intensifies,  but  narrows.  The 
singular  combination  of  great  intellectual  range  with 
passionate  intensity  of  utterance  which  characterizes 
Browning  is  explained  by  the  indissoluble  union  in 
which  he  holds  thought  and  action.  The  dramatic 
monologue,  which  belongs  to  him  as  truly  as  the 
terza  rima  to  Dante,  or  the  nine-line  stanza  to 
Spenser,  has  this  great  advantage  over  other  forms 
of  expression,  that  it  gives  us  with  the  truth  the 
character  which  that  truth  has  formed ;  instead  of  an 
abstraction  we  have  a  piece  of  reality. 

In  his  essay  on  Shelley,  Browning  makes  a  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  great  classes  of  poets,  —  the 
seers  and  the  makers.  It  is  conceded  on  all  sides 
that  Browning  is  a  seer;  is  he  also  a  maker?  The 
question  involves  a  good  deal  more  than  the  posses- 
sion of  the  skill  of  the  craftsman  who  employs  ap- 
proved methods  and  makes  his  work  conform  to  the 
best- accepted  standards.  Art  is  as  inexhaustible  as 
Nature ;  and  those  who  know  most  thoroughly  the 
history  of  the  development  of  literature  will  be  slowest 
to  condemn  a  form  of  expression  which  does  not  at 
a  glance  reveal  all  its  content  of  beauty  and  strength 
to  them.     A  thinker  of  Browning's  depth  and  subtilty 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  133 

will  never  attract  those  to  whom  literature  is  a  recrea- 
tion simply,  —  a  decorative  art  which  aims  to  beguile 
the  senses  by  purely  sensuous  melody,  and  to  substitute 
for  the  hardship  of  thinking  a  pleasantly  superficial 
comment  on  or  embellishment  of  life.  Great  art 
will  never  be  easy  of  comprehension  to  any  save 
those  who  have  been  trained  to  the  point  of  under- 
standing what  it  signifies,  and  whose  imaginations  are 
sympathetically  awakened  and  dilated  by  it.  The 
fact  that  a  writer  is  difficult,  that  his  meaning  does 
not  play  like  a  sunbeam  on  the  surface  of  his  ex- 
pression, but  must  be  sought  in  the  very  structure  of 
his  work,  does  not  disprove  his  possession  of  the 
highest  artistic  power.  Sophocles  is  still  the  supreme 
artist  among  all  those  who  have  impressed  their 
genius  upon  language;  but  Sophocles  never  conde- 
scends to  make  himself  agreeable  to  our  easy,  care- 
less moods ;  he  demands  our  best  hours  and  severest 
thought.  Dante  stands,  by  the  suffrages  of  all 
civilized  peoples,  among  the  three  or  four  foremost 
poetc  of  the  world ;  but  the  "  Divine  Comedy  "  was 
never  yet  mastered  by  the  wayfaring  man.  The  fact 
that  Browning  is  often  difficult  is  evidently  not  con- 
clusive evidence  of  his  failure  as  an  artist.  The  great 
body  of  his  work  is  perfectly  comprehensible  when 
one  approaches  it  from  the  poet's  own  point  of  view. 
It  is  then  seen  to  be,  for  the  most  part,  marvellously 
adapted  to  the  utterance  of  his  thought,  the  masterful 
expression  of  his  purpose.  The  dramatic  monologue 
is  not  easy  reading  at  first ;  but  when  one  has  become 


134      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

familiar  with  it,  does  any  form  of  art  seem  so  alive 
with  the  potency  of  passion,  so  compact  and  yet  so 
flexible  and  expressive  ?  Does  not  "  My  Last 
Duchess "  tell  the  whole  story,  reveal  the  whole 
interior  tragedy,  in  a  few  swift  words,  not  one  of 
which  misses  the  exact  emphasis,  the  essential  and 
inevitable  weight?  It  lies  within  the  power  of  no 
secondary  artist  to  match  his  thought  with  an  ex- 
pression that  is  instantly  and  forever  a  part  of  that 
thought,  —  not  its  form  only,  but  its  soul,  irradiating 
and  fashioning  the  whole  by  its  own  impulsion. 

In  literature  there  is  not  only  great  variety  of  type, 
but  there  is  always  the  possibility  of  the  new  type. 
The  genius  of  each  age  creates  its  own  expression  by 
the  same  unconscious  but  irresistible  development 
which  gives  its  insight  new  direction  or  its  construc- 
tive tendency  a  new  impulse.  It  is  never  a  question 
of  conformity  to  accredited  standards ;  it  is  always  a 
question  of  adequate  and  inevitable  expression.  The 
form  which  comes  inevitably  with  a  new  thought  of 
Nature  or  life  is  invariably  recognized  in  the  end  as 
instinct  with  the  art  spirit.  The  style  of  "Sartor 
Resartus  "  is  fatal  to  every  imitator ;  but  to  convey  the 
set  of  impressions,  to  place  one  at  the  point  of  view, 
which  are  the  essential  things  in  the  book,  it  is 
thoroughly  artistic.  The  man  who  wrote  "  Sartor 
Resartus  "  and  "  The  Diamond  Necklace  "  was  a 
literary  artist  of  a  very  high  rank,  although  he  pos- 
sessed nothing  in  common  with  the  Benvenuto  Cellini 
school  of  literary  craftsmanship. 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  135 

The  distinctive  quality  of  an  artist  is  that  which 
leads  him  to  use  the  one  form  of  expression  which 
gives  his  thought  the  most  virile  and  capacious  utter- 
ance ;  which  not  only  conveys  to  another  its  definite 
outlines,  but  those  undisclosed  relations  which  unite 
it  to  the  totality  of  his  thinking.  Now,  at  his  best 
this  is  precisely  what  Browning  does ;  he  puts  us  in 
complete  possession  of  his  conception.  He  gives  us 
not  only  the  fruit  of  a  great  passion  in  some  clear, 
decisive  action,  he  indicates  every  stage  of  the 
obscure  processes  which  lay  behind  it.  The  soil  out 
of  which  it  drew  its  sustenance,  the  sky  that  bent 
over  it,  the  winds  that  touched  it  gently  or  harshly, 
shadow  of  cloud  and  flash  of  sun  upon  it,  the  atmos- 
phere that  enveloped  it,  the  movement  of  human  life 
about  it,  —  all  these  things  become  clear  to  us  as  we 
read  such  a  story  as  the  crime  of  Guido  in  "  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  become  part  of  the  intricate 
play,  become  part  also  of  our  imagination,  until  at 
last  the  marvellous  drama  is  complete  in  a  sense  in 
which  few  works  of  art  are  complete.  Browning's 
view  of  life  and  art  and  Nature  is  not  that  of  the 
scientific  observer  or  of  the  philosopher;  it  is  the 
artist's  view.  And  those  who  come  into  sympathy  with 
it  are  persuaded  that  it  is  a  view  which  enlarges  and 
enriches  art  on  every  side,  and  that  the  man  who  has 
attained  it  is  not  only  an  artist,  but  an  artist  in  the  truest 
and  deepest  meaning  of  a  great  but  ill-used  word. 

Browning  not  only  sees  life  as  a  whole  and  sees  it 
in  its  large  relations ;  he  sees  it  always  through  the 


136      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

imagination.  The  bare,  unrelated  fact  touches  and 
inspires  him ;  he  feels  the  warm  life  in  it ;  he  under- 
stands it  because  there  is  something  in  himself  which 
answers  to  it ;  it  begins  to  glow  in  his  thought ;  other 
facts  gather  about  it.  It  may  be  a  fragment  when  it 
leaves  the  poet's  hands,  but  it  will  suggest  the  whole ; 
fragment  or  complete  and  elaborately  worked  out 
conception,  the  truth  that  lies  at  its  heart  somehow 
penetrates  us,  rouses  our  imagination,  possesses  us 
then  and  finally,  not  only  as  true,  but  as  beautiful  in 
some  new  and  deep  way.  "  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  "  will 
hardly  attract  those  who  are  content  with  the  sweet 
and  obvious  commonplaces  of  the  "  Psalm  of  Life ;  " 
but  it  is  one  of  the  incomparable  works  which  slowly 
distil  their  meaning  to  deepening  thought  and  widen- 
ing experience.  Is  there  not  in  the  sense  of  incom- 
pleteness which  many  of  Browning's  works  convey  a 
hint  of  that  larger  art  of  the  future  whose  depth  of 
beauty  shall  lie,  not  in  faultless  outline,  but  in  inex- 
haustible suggestiveness ;  not  in  the  perfection  of 
form  which  captures  us  at  a  glance  and  then  slowly 
releases  us  as  its  charm  becomes  familiar,  but  in  that 
amplitude  of  idea  and  of  aspiration  which  slowly  wins 
us  to  itself  by  a  power  which  penetrates  and  dilates 
our  imagination  more  and  more  ?  Life  is  incomplete, 
—  a  titanesque  fragment  as  Browning  sees  it ;  shall  not 
art  also  share  that  incompleteness  which  runs  like  a 
shining  line  of  prophecy  across  all  the  works  of  our 
hands?  "  On  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven 
a  perfect  round." 


ROBERT  BROWNING.  1 37 

In  what  has  been  said  the  endeavour  has  been  to  lay 
bare  Browning's  characteristic  quality  as  a  thinker 
and  as  an  artist,  to  make  clear  his  distinctive  and 
peculiar  message  and  work.  A  poet  of  such  vigour,  of 
such  intense  vitality,  will  disclose  grave  faults.  It  is 
the  work  of  intelligent  criticism,  while  it  takes 
account  of  these  things,  to  make  it  clear  that  incom- 
pleteness is  a  necessary  part  of  life.  The  Angelos 
are  always  somewhat  careless  of  detail ;  the  Cellinis 
alone  are  faultless.  Browning  sometimes  sees  life  on 
its  spontaneous  side  so  clearly  that  he  fails  to  attach 
due  weight  to  conventions  and  institutions;  he  has 
more  than  once  wasted  his  force  on  unimportant 
themes ;  and  he  is  sometimes  needlessly  and  exas- 
peratingly  obscure.  "  Sordello,"  for  instance,  is  dis- 
tinctly defective  as  a  work  of  art,  because  the  concep- 
tion was  evidently  not  mastered  at  the  start ;  and  the 
undeniable  confusion  and  obscurity  of  the  poem  are 
due  largely  to  this  offence  against  the  primary  law  of 
art.  The  lover  of  Browning  will  not  shrink  from  the 
application  of  a  rigid  selective  principle  to  a  body  of 
verse  which  he  is  persuaded  will  remain,  after  all 
deductions  are  made,  one  of  the  most  powerful,  varied, 
and  nobly  executed  contributions  to  contemporary 
poetry,  the  splendid  utterance  of  a  great  soul  who 
has  searched  knowledge,  nature,  art,  and  life,  and 
with  the  awful  vision  clear  before  him  still  sings  with 
Pippa :  — 

"  God 's  in  his  heaven, 
All 's  right  with  the  world." 


JOHN   KEATS:  POET  AND   MAN. 

The  apparent  misfortune  of  early  death  has  had 
no  more  striking  illustration  than  in  the  case  of 
Keats,  to  whom  it  meant  not  only  arrested  devel- 
opment, but  a  curiously  complete  and  persistent  mis- 
conception of  his  character  and  life.  Of  no  other 
English  poet  has  the  popular  idea  been  so  wide  of  the 
mark;  about  no  other  English  poet  have  so  many 
clouds  of  misunderstanding  gathered  and  hung  to 
the  lasting  concealment  of  the  man.  Poetry  suffers 
chiefly  from  those  whose  idea  of  its  nature  and  func- 
tion is  so  superficial  that  they  set  it  at  odds  with 
life,  and  turn  its  vital,  mellow  sunshine,  the  very  joy 
and  fertility  of  Nature,  into  a  pale,  unfruitful  moonlight. 
Great  poetry  is  as  real,  as  natural,  as  sane,  as  neces- 
sary to  the  life  of  man  as  air  and  light.  Of  this  sort 
was  the  greater  part  of  the  poetry  of  Keats ;  of  this 
sort  would  it  have  become  wholly  had  time  and 
growth  fully  ripened  his  gift. 

And  yet  above  all  English  poets  Keats  has  been  the 
victim  of  his  feeble  brethren,  who  mitigate  their  own 
sense  of  baffled  ambition  with  the  remembrance  of 
his  woes  at  the  hands  of  the  Philistine  reviewers, 
and  of  those  sentimental  hangers-on  at  the  court  of 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 39 

poetry  who  mistake  the  king's  robe  for  the  king's 
majesty,  and  whose  solemn  genuflections  are  the  very 
mockery  of  homage.  Instead  of  the  real  Keats, 
virile,  manly,  courageous,  well-poised,  and  full  of  noble 
ambitions,  the  world  has  fashioned  for  itself  a  weakly, 
sentimental,  sensuous  maker  of  over-ripe  verse,  with- 
out large  ideas  of  his  art,  and  sensitive  to  the  very 
death  under  the  lash  of  a  stupid  and  vulgar  criticism. 
It  was  no  small  offence  against  the  memory  of  this 
peculiarly  rich  and  sane  nature  that  these  misconcep- 
tions were  permitted  to  become  traditions.  Although 
Lord  Houghton,  Mr.  Arnold,  Professor  Colvin,  and 
other  students  and  critics  of  Keats  have  done  much 
to  rescue  his  fame  from  the  hands  of  those  who  have 
accomplished  what  blundering  critics  were  unable  to 
effect,  there  is  still  much  to  be  done  before  the  world, 
which  takes  its  impressions  rapidly  and  at  second 
hand,  is  set  right  concerning  one  of  the  most 
promising  men  of  the  age. 

Obscurity,  poverty,  and  all  manner  of  untoward 
circumstances  have  attached  themselves  to  the  early 
years  of  Keats ;  and  if  widely  prevailing  notions  are  to 
be  accepted,  no  poet  ever  had  so  unlucky  a  start  in 
life.  It  is  true  that  Keats  was  bora  of  obscure 
parentage,  and  that  as  a  child  he  did  not  overhear 
the  talk  of  drawing-rooms  or  play  in  the  shadow 
of  university  towns ;  but  he  must  be  a  very  self- 
confident  critic  who  would  dogmatically  pronounce 
either  circumstance  a  misfortune.  Keats  was  not 
coddled   by   fortune,   but   he   was   as  well  bora   as 


14°       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Shakespeare,  and  with  much  more  ease  of  circum- 
stance and  condition  than  Burns.  The  year  of  his 
birth  was  an  auspicious  one  for  English  literature  and 
for  the  happy  development  of  his  genius ;  for  in  the 
good  year  of  1795,  while  he  was  opening  his  eyes  in 
London,  Thomas  Carlyle  was  cradled  in  Ecclefechan. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  a  splendid  chapter  of  English 
literary  history;  and  the  prelude  of  the  deep,  rich 
music  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  already  in  the 
ear  that  could  hear  it.  Ten  years  earlier  Cowper  had 
published  the  "Task;"  and  a  year  later,  in  1786, 
from  an  obscure  press  at  Kilmarnock  had  come  a 
slender  volume  of  songs  full  of  the  fresh  and  haunting 
music  which  Burns  sang  to  his  plough  on  the  uplands 
of  Ayrshire.  In  the  year  of  Keats's  birth  Wordsworth 
was  twenty-five,  and  "  The  Lyrical  Ballads "  were 
only  three  years  distant ;  Coleridge  was  twenty-three ; 
Southey  twenty-one ;  Landor  twenty ;  Scott  twenty- 
four.  A  group  of  powerful  and  original  writers,  who 
were  to  broaden  and  deepen  the  new  tendencies  in 
English  literature,  were  standing  on  the  threshold  of 
the  new  day  which  came  with  them.  A  group  of 
immediate  contemporaries,  hardly  less  variously  and 
richly  endowed,  were  starting  in  the  race  with  Keats, 
—  some  to  be  his  helpers  and  friends,  others  to  pass 
him  with  scant  recognition  or  to  "damn  him  with 
faint  praise."  Byron  was  born  seven  years  earlier  than 
Keats,  Shelley  three  years  earlier,  De  Quincey  ten 
years,  Leigh  Hunt  eleven  years.  Another  group, 
including  Tennyson,  Browning,  Newman,  Ruskin,  and 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  141 

Arnold,  were  to  keep  up  the  immediate  succession  of 
men  of  genius  which  has  been  unbroken  since  the 
birth  of  Burns.  To  have  fallen  upon  such  a  period, 
when  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  tides  were  rising, 
when  English  literature  was  recalling  in  the  breadth  and 
splendour  of  its  movement  the  great  Elizabethan  age, 
was  no  small  good- fortune.  Mr.  Arnold  has  said  that 
in  the  creation  of  a  master-work  of  literature  two 
powers  must  concur,  —  "  the  power  of  the  man  and 
the  power  of  the  moment."  Keats  came  at  the  oppor- 
tune moment,  —  the  moment  when  fresh  impulses  were 
felt  by  all  sensitive  spirits,  when  ideas  were  gaining 
the  force  and  momentum  of  great  currents  through 
society. 

The  domestic  conditions  which  surrounded  the 
boy  Keats  did  not  foster  and  stimulate  his  gift  of 
imagination ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  they  formed  no 
great  obstacle  to  the  free  play  of  his  nature.  If  there 
was  no  direct  ministry  of  circumstances  to  his  har- 
monious development,  there  was  no  long  and  bitter 
struggle  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  his  genius.  His 
parentage  was  humble  and  obscure,  for  the  poet  was 
born  in  a  stable,  opposite  Finsbury  Pavement  in 
London ;  but  of  his  father  Cowden  Clarke  reports 
that  he  was  a  man  "  of  so  remarkably  fine  a  common- 
sense  and  native  respectability  that  I  perfectly  re- 
member the  warm  terms  in  which  his  demeanour 
used  to  be  canvassed  by  my  parents  after  he  had 
been  to  visit  his  boys;  "  while  of  his  mother  it  is  said 
that  she  was  a  woman  of  sense  and  energy,  agreeable 


142      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

and  intelligent,  and  that  she  inspired  her  children 
"with  the  profoundest  affection."  Her  son  George 
describes  her  as  "a  woman  of  uncommon  talents." 
Even  the  grandparents  are  remembered  as  persons 
of  marked  ability  and  geniality  of  temper.  The 
grandfather  was  in  independent  circumstances,  and 
would  have  been  rich  if  he  had  been  less  unsuspect- 
ing and  generous ;  add  to  this  that  there  was  always 
money  enough  to  insure  comfortable  living,  —  at  times 
enough  not  only  for  independence,  but  for  generous 
and  easy  habits  of  life,  —  that  Keats  was  free  from 
serious  money  troubles  until  within  a  few  months 
of  his  death,  and  it  must  be  conceded  that  in  many 
respects  the  poet's  youth  was  fortunate  as  compared 
with  conditions  which  often  surround  boys  of  excep- 
tional nature  and  gift.  It  was  no  doubt  distinctly 
unpleasant,  when  "  Endymion"  fell  into  the  hands  of 
Wilson  and  Lockhart,  to  be  branded  as  a  cockney 
and  remanded  to  the  gallipots ;  but  there  happened 
to  be  no  one  in  England  at  that  moment,  however 
fortunately  born  and  bred,  who  had  the  inimitable 
touch,  the  rich  and  splendid  diction  of  the  cockney 
of  Finsbury  Pavement.  Keats  had  brought  his  genius 
to  its  noble  flowering ;  and  the  fact  that  this  supreme 
crisis  was  safely  passed  is  sufficient  evidence  that  if 
he  missed  some  happy  circumstances  of  prosperous 
childhood,  he  possessed  all  the  essential  conditions. 

The  parents  of  the  poet  had  very  honourable  ambi- 
tions for  their  sons,  and  sent  them  early  to  school. 
When  John  Keats  was  nine  years  old,  his  father  was 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 43 

killed  by  a  fall  from  a  horse ;  the  following  year  the 
mother  married  again.  The  second  marriage  was 
speedily  followed  by  a  separation ;  and  the  unhappy 
wife  betook  herself  with  her  children  to  the  home  of 
her  mother  in  Edmonton.  The  grandmother  had  a 
fortune  of  about  seventy  thousand  dollars,  —  no  small 
sum  for  a  family  of  the  social  status  of  the  Keatses 
at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  The  following  five 
years  passed  uneventfully  in  attendance  upon  the 
Rev.  John  Clarke's  school  at  Enfield,  with  pleasant 
holidays  at  the  grandmother's  comfortable  home. 
The  first  impressions  of  the  poet's  bearing  and  char- 
acter date  from  this  period ;  and  they  show  us  not  a 
sickly,  precocious,  and  retiring  youth,  but  a  boy  of  un- 
common spirit  and  vitality,  —  passionate,  vehement, 
impressionable,  and  lovable ;  pugnacious  to  a  degree, 
but  as  quick  to  make  peace  as  to  open  hostilities. 
He  was  a  natural  leader  in  the  school,  and  even  his 
brothers  fell  under  his  occasional  tyranny.  "  I  loved 
him  from  boyhood,"  wrote  his  brother  George, 
"  even  when  he  wronged  me,  for  the  goodness  of  his 
heart  and  the  nobleness  of  his  spirit." 

Through  this  virile  and  manly  nature,  energetic  and 
assertive  to  the  verge  of  pugnacity,  there  ran  a  deep 
vein  of  sentiment ;  and  combined  with  this  vigorous 
health  of  mind  and  body,  there  was  that  extreme  sen- 
sitiveness, that  delicate  poise  of  the  spirit  between 
sadness  and  joy,  which  goes  with  a  high  imagina- 
tive endowment.  It  is  not  difficult  to  realize  the 
character  of  the  boy,   sharing  with  his  fellows  the 


144      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

boundless  physical  delight  of  youth,  and  yet  over- 
clouded at  times  with  stirrings  of  a  genius  which 
made  him  an  alien  on  the  playground,  a  solitary 
among  the  shouting  throng.  These  overcast  days 
were  few,  however;  for  genius,  instead  of  being  the 
disease  sometimes  fancied  by  those  who  confuse  it  with 
morbid  self-consciousness,  is  the  very  highest  sanity 
and  health. 

As  a  schoolboy,  Keats  cared  more  for  fighting 
than  for  books;  but  in  spite  of  his  vehemence  and 
occasional  violence,  he  was  a  prime  favourite,  —  his 
high-mindedness,  tenderness,  and  real  nobility  supple- 
menting his  physical  leadership  with  another  and 
finer  authority.  There  comes  a  time,  however,  in  the 
life  of  a  boy  of  such  gifts  when  the  obscure  stirrings 
become  more  frequent  and  profound;  the  imagina- 
tion no  longer  hints  at  its  presence,  but  begins  to 
sound  its  mysterious  and  thrilling  note  in  the  soul. 
There  is  no  other  moment  so  wonderful  as  this  first 
hour  of  awakening,  —  this  dawn  of  the  beauty  and 
wonder  and  mystery  of  the  world  on  a  nature  that  has 
been  living  only  the  glad,  unthinking  life  of  the  senses. 
It  came  to  Keats  in  his  fifteenth  year,  —  came  with 
that  sudden  hunger  and  thirst  for  knowledge  which 
consume  the  days  with  desire  as  with  a  fire,  and  fill 
the  young  heart  with  passionate  longing  to  drain  the 
cup  of  experience  at  a  draught.  "  In  my  mind's  eye 
I  now  see  him  at  supper,"  writes  Cowden  Clarke,  "sit- 
ting back  on  the  form  from  the  table,  holding  the  folio 
volume  of  Burnet's  '  History  of  his  Own  Time '  be- 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 45 

tween  himself  and  the  table,  eating  his  meal  from 
beyond  it."  He  forsook  the  playground,  became 
absorbed  in  reading,  carried  off  all  the  literary  prizes, 
devoured  the  school  library,  translated  the  entire 
^Eneid  into  prose.  He  took  to  mythology  as  a  bird 
takes  to  air;  and  he  knew  Tooke's  "Pantheon," 
Lempriere's  Dictionary,  and  kindred  books  by  heart. 
No  bee  ever  settled  for  the  first  time  into  the  heart  of 
a  flower  with  keener  consciousness  of  touching  the 
farthest  bounds  of  delight  than  did  this  eager-hearted 
boy  surrender  himself  to  that  ancient  world  of  beauty 
which  lives  again  wherever  a  poet  finds  it. 

In  the  midst  of  this  intense  preoccupation  there 
came  a  swift  and  momentous  change  of  conditions : 
the  mother  died,  and  the  grandmother,  eager  to  make 
the  wisest  disposition  of  her  property,  placed  her 
grandchildren  under  the  custody  of  two  guardians  to 
whom  she  conveyed,  in  trust,  the  greater  part  of  her 
estate.  One  of  the  guardians,  a  London  tea  mer- 
chant, seems  henceforth  to  have  had  matters  in  his 
own  hands.  He  removed  Keats,  now  fifteen  years 
old,  from  school,  and  bound  him  for  five  years  as  an 
apprentice  to  a  surgeon  of  the  neighbourhood.  From 
the  tea-selling  point  of  view  the  change  was  no  doubt 
judicious ;  from  the  poet's  point  of  view  it  was  hard 
and  blundering.  Keats  had  frequent  difficulties  with 
the  same  guardian;  and  as  his  management  of  the 
poet's  property  was  neither  judicious  nor  creditable,  it 
is  within  bounds  to  say  that  his  management  of  the 
poet  was  neither  intelligent  nor  generous. 


146      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

Keats's  occupations  were  interrupted ;  but  his  inter- 
ests were  not  changed,  nor  was  his  progress  greatly 
impeded.  Reading  and  translating  went  steadily  on ; 
books  were  borrowed  and  devoured ;  and  visits  to  the 
Enfield  school  were  frequent.  With  Cowden  Clarke, 
the  first  of  his  friends  of  the  mind,  Keats  became 
constantly  more  intimate.  They  were  at  the  morning 
hour,  when  the  whole  world  turns  to  gold.  It  is  easy 
to  picture  them  in  an  arbour  in  the  school  garden, 
oblivious  of  Time  and  London,  —  those  dragons  that 
waste  the  fair  country  of  the  Ideal,  —  reading  poetry 
together.  On  one  of  those  blissful  days  —  Time  lean- 
ing on  his  scythe  and  London  grown  silent  —  Clarke 
dipped  into  Spenser;  and  on  the  ears  of  the  young 
poet  there  fell  for  the  first  time  the  melody  of  that 
older  poet  who  was  to  clear  his  vision  and  make  him 
conscious  of  his  gift.  In  the  afternoon  they  read  the 
"  Epithalamium  "  together,  and  in  the  evening  Keats 
carried  the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  home  with  him.  Never, 
surely,  was  friendship  happier  in  its  ministry,  or  a 
young  poet,  stranger  to  himself,  more  fortunate  in 
finding  at  the  critical  moment  the  one  guide  in  all 
literature  to  the  secrets  and  the  riches  of  his  art ! 
The  delight  of  that  day  still  glows  after  eighty  years  of 
change  and  death,  —  a  delight  deep  as  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  great  nature,  and  passionate  as  its  hopes  and 
aspirations.  Keats  had  come  to  his  own,  and  it  was 
not  the  surgeon's  shop ;  it  was  the  great  world  of  the 
imagination,  in  the  power  of  realizing  which  to  eyes  less 
penetrating  and  to  minds  less  sensitive  he  was  to  be 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  147 

without  a  master  so  far   as  time  and   growth  were 
given  him. 

The  boy  of  fifteen  fastened  upon  the  "Faerie 
Queene"with  a  passionate  delight;  it  liberated  his 
imagination ;  it  spread  before  him  all  he  had  been 
dimly  groping  after ;  it  gave  his  intelligence  suddenly 
all  the  material  through  which  beauty  expresses  and 
reveals  itself.  He  sounded  the  deep,  imaginative 
reach  of  the  poem  and  felt  its  profound  and  mystical 
beauty ;  but  he  saw  also  the  secret  of  its  workman- 
ship; he  caught  the  splendour  that  lies  hidden  in 
words.  "He  hoisted  himself  up,"  says  Clarke,  "and 
looked  burly  and  dominant,  as  he  said,  •  What  an 
image  that  is,  —  sea-shouldering  whales! '  "  The  boy 
had  suddenly  become  a  poet ;  henceforth  all  happen- 
ings  were  of    secondary   importance. 

The  lines  entitled  "  In  Imitation  of  Spenser," 
which  appeared  in  his  earliest  published  volume  of 
verse,  were  Keats's  first  venture  into  the  field  which 
the  "  Faerie  Queene  "  opened  to  him,  and  bear  direct 
testimony  to  the  deep  impression  made  upon  him  by 
Spenser;  the  influence  of  the  elder  poet  was,  how- 
ever, of  the  creative,  not  of  the  enslaving  kind ;  it  was 
an  influence  felt  chiefly  in  the  liberation  of  the  young 
and  untried  spirit.  Thus  it  is  that  one  human  life 
ministers  to  another,  and  the  vision  recorded  by  one 
great  imagination  becomes  the  kindling  torch  of 
another  glow  on  the  horizon  of  life.  Keats  was  a 
man  of  too  virile  and  original  genius  to  remain  long 
a  debtor  even  to  one  of  the  masters  of  his  craft ;  a 


148      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

clear  consciousness  of  his  power  and  the  practice  that 
lies  between  that  consciousness  and  the  mastery  of 
his  art  were  all  that  Keats  needed.  The  first  he 
owed  to  Spenser;  the  second  he  immediately  set 
about  acquiring  for  himself.  With  the  secrecy  and 
diffidence  of  a  youth  impelled  to  rhyme  and  con- 
scious of  his  lack  of  skill,  Keats  began  writing  sonnets 
and  other  verses,  concealing  these  first  flowers  of  his 
fancy  even  from  Cowden  Clarke,  who  saw  them  for 
the  first  time  two  years  later.  The  bondage  of  the 
apprenticeship  was  slowly  wearing  to  its  close ;  but 
more  than  a  year  before  the  expiration  of  the  term  of 
five  years,  the  articles  were  cancelled,  and  hence- 
forth, as  Mr.  Lowell  has  said,  "  his  indentures  ran  to 
Apollo  instead  of  Mr.  Hammond." 

In  1 8 14,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  still  looking  for- 
ward to  medicine  as  a  vocation  and  to  the  making  of 
verse  as  an  avocation,  Keats  entered  the  hospitals  of 
St.  Thomas's  and  Guy's  as  a  medical  student.  Two 
and  a  half  years  passed  in  apparent  devotion  to 
medical  study  :  during  the  early  months  of  this  period 
the  study  was  serious  and  real ;  during  the  later 
months  the  charm  of  poetry  steadily  deepened.  It 
became  his  real  pursuit,  his  passion,  and  his  life ;  but 
he  carried  on  his  professional  study  with  sufficient 
zeal  to  pass  with  credit  the  regular  examination  as 
a  licentiate  and  to  secure  a  hospital  appointment  at 
Guy's.  To  go  further  was  to  assume  grave  and  dis- 
tasteful responsibilities  and  to  put  aside  visions  that 
were  summoning  him  with  deepening  insistence  into 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 49 

a  field  whose  freshness  and  fragrance  drew  him 
irresistibly  from  the  operating-room.  "  The  other 
day,"  he  wrote  Cowden  Clarke,  "  during  the  lecture, 
there  came  a  sunbeam  into  the  room,  and  with  it  a 
whole  troop  of  creatures  floating  in  the  ray ;  and  I 
was  off  with  them  to  Oberon  and  fairy- land."  In 
such  a  contention  the  lecture-room  was  certain  to 
lose  the  day ;  and  yet  such  was  the  reality  and  force 
of  Keats's  mind  that  had  he  chosen  to  follow  the 
profession  of  medicine  he  would  undoubtedly  have 
followed  it  with  high  success. 

Meantime  friendships  with  literary  men,  or  with 
men  of  literary  sympathies,  had  been  expanding  the 
life  of  the  young  poet  and  bringing  him  into  closer 
contact  with  the  world.  Clarke  recalled  long  after- 
ward the  fact  that  shortly  after  the  liberation  from 
prison  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  February,  18 15,  Keats  gave 
him  the  sonnet  entitled  "  Written  on  the  day  that  Mr. 
Leigh  Hunt  left  prison."  This  was  the  first  decisive 
evidence  Keats  gave  of  having  committed  himself  to 
verse ;  and  Clarke  clearly  remembered  the  conscious 
look  and  obvious  hesitation  of  the  shy  young  poet. 
Not  long  after,  and  on  a  more  memorable  occasion, 
the  two  friends  fell  upon  a  copy  of  Chapman's  trans- 
lation of  Homer ;  and  that  same  night  Keats  wrote  the 
famous  sonnet  and  struck  for  the  first  time  that  rich 
and  mellow  note,  resonant  of  a  beauty  deeper  even 
than  its  own  magical  cadence,  heard  for  the  first 
time  in  English  poetry.  The  sonnet  has  a  largeness 
of  idea,  a  breadth  of  imagination,  an  amplitude  of 


1 5°      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

serene  beauty,  which  make  it  the  fitting  prelude  of 
Keats's  later  work.  In  the  sestet  with  which  it  closes 
he  placed  himself  at  a  bound  beside  the  masters  of 
his  art :  — 

"  Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 

Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific  —  and  all  his  men 

Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise  — 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

The  friendship  with  Leigh  Hunt,  which  began 
about  this  time,  brought  Keats  in  contact  with  a  pro- 
fessional man  of  letters,  who  had  a  wide  if  somewhat 
desultory  knowledge  of  literature,  and  who  wa,s  a 
passionate  student  and  lover  of  earlier  English  verse, 
bent  upon  restoring  with  his  own  hand  the  large 
movement  and  easy  naturalness  of  the  pre-classical 
period.  The  result  of  that  endeavour  was  the  "  Story 
of  Rimini ;  "  in  which,  with  only  partial  success,  the 
heroic  couplet  was  freed  from  the  artificial  compres- 
sion to  which  it  had  been  subjected  by  Dryden  and 
Pope  and  their  followers  and  given  the  free,  full,  and 
flowing  movement  which  it  has  in  the  verse  of 
Chaucer  and  of  the  Elizabethans  generally.  Hunt, 
who  had  an  almost  infallible  instinct  for  good  work 
from  other  hands,  and  who  seemed  to  scent  the  rarest 
fragrance  in  whatever  field  of  poetry  he  strayed,  was 
strong  in  fancy  rather  than  in  imagination.  Not  to 
his  delicate  genius,  but  to  the  ampler  and  profounder 
spirit  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  English  poetry 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  15 1 

was  to  owe  the  completion  of  the  emancipation  begun 
by  Cowper  and  Burns.  If  Hunt  failed  of  the  high 
task  he  had  imposed  upon  himself,  he  was  not  lack- 
ing in  gifts  of  high  order;  and  he  had  what  is 
sometimes  more  valuable  to  others  as  a  source  of  in- 
spiration than  great  gifts,  the  literary  temperament; 
he  was  ardent,  sensitive,  impressionable,  enthusiastic, 
capable  of  great  admirations  and  of  great  devotions. 
He,  too,  was  a  lover  of  Spenser ;  and  if  he  missed  the 
profounder  insight  of  Keats,  he  brought  to  the  younger 
poet  a  quick  sympathy,  a  keen  zest  for  the  delights 
of  literature,  and  a  wide  familiarity  with  whatever  was 
most  alluring  in  it.  In  many  ways  the  companion- 
ship was  helpful  and  stimulating ;  the  force  of  Keats's 
creative  impulse  was  so  much  more  powerful  than 
that  of  Hunt,  and  issued  from  depths  so  much  pro- 
founder,  that  he  was  in  no  danger  of  feeling  the 
influence  of  the  older  man  too  deeply. 

Friendship  with  Hunt  brought  him  into  contact 
with  a  number  of  kindred  spirits,  —  with  John  Hamil- 
ton Reynolds,  full  of  the  charm  of  dawning  talent 
and  brilliant  wit;  with  James  Rice,  whom  Dilke 
describes  as  the  best,  and  in  his  quaint  way,  one  of 
the  wittiest  and  wisest  men  he  had  ever  known ;  with 
Shelley,  whose  name  was  to  be  so  intimately  associ- 
ated with  his  own  in  the  splendour  of  a  common 
promise  of  youth  and  the  sadness  of  a  common 
prematurity  of  death;  with  the  painter  Haydon, 
whose  vast  ambition  was  to  be  mocked  by  the  inade- 
quacy of  his  talent  to  meet  the  demand  he  imposed 


152      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

upon  it  for  work  of  heroic  type  and  epic  magnitude ; 
with  Joseph  Severn,  a  lover  of  letters  and  art,  whose 
social  charm  Mr.  Ruskin  has  preserved  in  one  of  his 
characteristic  sentences ;  "  lightly  sagacious,  lovingly 
humorous,  daintily  sentimental,  he  was  in  council 
with  the  cardinals  to-day,  and  at  picnic  on  the  Cam- 
pagna  with  the  brightest  English  belles  to-morrow, 
and  caught  the  hearts  of  all  in  the  golden  net  of  his 
goodwill  and  good  understanding,  as  if  life  were  but 
for  him  the  rippling  chant  of  his  favourite  song,  — 

"  '  Gente,  e  qui  l'uccellatore.' " 

A  goodly  company  of  friends  surely  for  the  young 
poet;  and  another  evidence  that  fortune  did  not 
avert  her  face  from  the  years  of  his  self-discovery 
and  self-culture  ! 

In  the  congenial  companionship  of  this  group  of 
variously  gifted  men  Keats  found  sympathy,  apprecia- 
tion, and,  in  some  cases,  enthusiastic  encouragement ; 
and  in  March,  181 7,  a  slender  column  of  verse  came 
from  the  press  of  the  Olliers.  As  a  motto  for  his 
first  venture  the  poet  selected  the  lines  from  Spenser : 

"  What  more  felicity  can  fall  to  creature 
Than  to  enjoy  delight  with  liberty  ?  " 

Over  the  gateway  of  his  career  Keats  thus  acknowl- 
edged his  indebtedness  to  the  past,  and  disclosed  the 
prime  qualities  of  his  own  contribution  to  English 
poetry.     Continuing  the  tradition  of  Spenser,  not  as 


JOHN  KEATS:   POET  AND  MAN.  1 53 

an  imitation,  but  as  an  inspiration,  he  was  to  illustrate 
the  liberty  of  a  new  force  in  poetry  and  the  delight 
which  lies  on  the  world  like  the  bloom  and  fragrance 
of  the  early  summer.  In  the  volume  of  1 8 1 7  there 
is  much  that  is  crude,  immature,  and  of  unequal 
workmanship ;  there  is  much  also  that  betrays  both 
the  vision  and  the  faculty  of  a  great  poet :  such  work 
as  the  sonnet  on  Chapman's  Homer  and  the  lines 
entitled  "  Sleep  and  Poetry "  convey  unmistakable 
intimation  of  the  presence  of  a  great  gift.  The  book 
was  necessarily  a  kind  of  prelude  to  the  poet's  real 
work ;  he  was  feeling  for  the  keys  of  his  instrument, 
learning  its  resources,  mastering  its  combinations. 
The  magical  touch  is  not  present  save  here  and  there 
in  detached  lines ;  there  is  little  of  that  quiet,  easy, 
assured  putting  forth  of  strength  which  later  was  to 
furnish  the  last  evidence  of  the  poet's  greatness.  He 
had  felicity  of  phrase,  but  he  lacked  that  finality  of 
beauty  which  marks  a  great  style ;  he  had  glimpses 
of  the  world  he  was  to  explore  with  so  keen  a  poetic 
intelligence,  but  he  lacked  that  full  and  ordered 
knowledge  which  was  to  make  him  one  of  the  masters 
of  the  things  of  the  imagination.  The  volume  had 
the  qualities  of  such  a  mind  as  his ;  profusion  of  idea 
and  imagery,  depth  and  freshness  of  feeling,  rare 
good  fortune  in  words  and  phrase,  the  exuberance, 
the  zest,  the  infinite  delight  of  a  poetic  mind  coming 
to  a  consciousness  of  its  power  and  spreading  wing 
for  the  first  flight.  It  had  also  the  defects  of  such 
a  mind  at  such  a  stage,  —  lack  of  critical  power,  of 


154      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

balance  between  thought  and  feeling,  of  restraint 
and  proportion. 

When  the  slender  book  appeared,  Haydon,  who 
always  borrowed  the  thunder  of  Jove  under  the  mis- 
taken impression  that  the  lightning  went  with  it, 
wrote  to  Keats :  "  I  have  read  your  '  Sleep  and 
Poetry ; '  it  is  a  flash  of  lightning  that  will  rouse 
men  from  their  occupations,  and  keep  them  trem- 
bling for  the  crash  of  thunder  that  will  follow." 
Whoever  read  that  beautiful  confession  of  a  poet's 
faith  must  have  recognized  the  birth  of  another  child 
of  the  Muses ;  but  unluckily  few  took  time  to  read 
it.  There  were  other  voices  in  the  air,  —  voices  of 
great  volume  and  of  penetrating  musical  quality ;  and 
the  fresh  note  of  this  new  voice  was  heard  by  few. 
Byron,  Scott,  and  the  facile  Moore  were  a  trio  such 
as  have  rarely  sought  and  won  popularity  at  the 
same  moment.  Keats  had  to  wait,  and  it  was  prob- 
ably a  piece  of  good  fortune  that  fame  remained  at 
a  distance  with  that  mask  of  indifference  which  she 
so  constantly  wears  for  those  whom  she  means  later 
to  crown.  There  were  a  few  commendatory  notices ; 
there  was  a  small  sale ;  and  there,  for  the  moment, 
the  matter  ended. 

Shortly  after  the  publication,  which  disappointed 
his  friends  apparently  more  than  himself,  Keats  left 
London  and  went  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  where  surely, 
if  anywhere  in  England,  a  bruised  spirit  may  find  that 
consolation  of  beauty  which  is  one  of  the  most  pene- 
trating ministries  of  the  divine  completeness  to  our 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  155 

mortal  incompleteness.  From  this  visit  dates  the 
beginning  of  that  correspondence  with  his  family  and 
friends  in  which  we  possess  a  kind  of  autobiography 
as  well  as  a  delightful  addition  to  English  letters.  It 
was  in  the  early  spring ;  "  as  for  primroses,  the 
Island  ought  to  be  called  Primrose  Island,  —  that  is, 
if  the  nation  of  Cowslips  agree  thereto,  of  which 
there  are  divers  clans  just  beginning  to  lift  up  their 
heads."  The  pain  and  stress  of  expression  —  that 
deep  necessity  of  artistic  minds  —  was  upon  him : 
"  I  find  I  cannot  exist  without  Poetry,  —  without 
eternal  Poetry ;  half  the  day  will  not  do ;  the  whole 
of  it.  I  began  with  a  little,  but  habit  has  made  me  a 
Leviathan.  I  had  become  all  in  a  tremble  from  not 
having  written  anything  of  late,  —  the  sonnet  over- 
leaf did  me  good.  I  slept  the  better  last  night  for 
it;  this  morning,  however,  I  am  nearly  as  bad 
again.  Just  now  I  opened  Spenser,  and  the  first  lines 
I  saw  were  these  :  — 

"  '  The  noble  heart  that  harbours  virtuous  thought, 
And  is  with  child  of  glorious  great  intent, 
Can  never  rest  until  it  forth  have  brought 
Th'  eternal  brood  of  glory  excellent'  " 

He  was  reading  and  writing  eight  hours  a  day,  feeling 
in  some  way  a  fellowship  with  Shakespeare  which 
seemed  to  carry  with  it  the  recognition  and  approval 
of  the  master  of  English  song,  and  brooding  over  the 
loveliness  of  Nature,  which  enfolded  him  with  the  joy 
and  exhaustlessness  of  eternal  poetry.     There  were 


156     ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

days  of  restlessness  and  irritation  which  foreshadowed 
the  physical  weakness  which  was  soon  to  assert  itself 
and,  in  a  measure,  defeat  the  promise  of  the  glowing 
spirit.  But  these  clouds  were  momentary;  there 
were  raptures  such  as  only  the  young  imagination 
knows.  Writing  to  Miss  Reynolds,  he  says  :  "  Believe 
me,  my  dear  Jane,  it  is  a  great  happiness  to  see  that 
you  are  in  this  finest  part  of  the  year  winning  a  little 
enjoyment  from  the  hard  world.  In  truth,  the  great 
Elements  we  know  of  are  no  mean  comforters :  the 
open  sky  sits  upon  our  senses  like  a  sapphire  crown ; 
the  Air  is  our  robe  of  state ;  the  Earth  is  our  throne ; 
and  the  Sea  a  mighty  minstrel  playing  before  it,  able, 
like  David's  harp,  to  make  such  a  one  as  you  forget 
almost  the  tempest  cares  of  life." 

These  words  are  significant  of  the  education  which 
Keats  was  giving  himself,  —  the  education  which  lies 
behind  every  great  career,  through  which  the  libera- 
tion of  every  original  mind  is  accomplished.  It  was 
no  shallow  inspiration  which  burned  like  fire  in  the 
soul  of  the  poet;  it  was  no  obvious  and  superficial 
beauty  which  mirrored  itself  in  his  soul,  and  which  he 
was  to  give  back  line  for  line.  His  springs  were  in  the 
secret  places,  fed  by  the  spirit  of  God  and  discovered 
by  those  alone  who  hold  the  divining-rod  of  genius. 
With  Keats,  as  with  all  the  masters  of  the  arts,  there 
was  no  separation  of  life  and  art ;  they  were  one  in 
that  fundamental  unity  which  men  never  break  save 
at  the  loss  of  what  is  deepest  in  thought  and  truest  in 
art,  —  that  sublime  marriage  of  which  all  the  great 


JOHN  KEATS:   POET  AND  MAN.  157 

works  of  art  are  the  offspring.  "  I  feel  more  and 
more  every  day,"  he  wrote,  "as  my  imagination 
strengthens,  that  I  do  not  live  in  this  world  alone,  but 
in  a  thousand  worlds.  No  sooner  am  I  alone  than 
shapes  of  epic  greatness  are  stationed  round  me,  and 
serve  my  spirit  the  office  which  is  equivalent  to  a 
king's  bodyguard,  —  then  '  Tragedy  with  sceptred 
pall  comes  sweeping  by.'  " 

Keats  was  now  at  work  on  the  story  of  "  En- 
dymion,"  moving  from  place  to  place  in  search  of  the 
most  favourable  conditions.  A  delightful  episode  in 
this  wandering  life  was  a  visit  of  six  weeks  at  Oxford, 
the  mornings  devoted  to  work  on  the  poem  and  the 
afternoons  to  walking  or  rowing.  The  charm  of  the 
city  was  on  him,  as  it  has  been  on  so  many  men  of 
imagination ;  and  Bailey,  who  was  his  companion,  re- 
cords the  wonderful  sweetness  and  charm  of  the  poet 
during  these  days  in  the  ripe  old  gardens  or  upon  the 
slow-moving  Isis.  The  months  that  followed  were 
shadowed  by  anxiety.  His  brother  Tom  was  ill,  and 
his  brother  George  was  preparing  to  emigrate  to  this 
country ;  but  Keats  kept  steadily  at  work,  and  "  En- 
dymion"  was  published  in  the  spring  of  1818.  The 
quality  and  place  of  the  poem  in  the  development  of 
his  mind  and  art  were  perfectly  understood  by  the 
poet.  He  had  very  moderate  expectations  of  its  suc- 
cess, and  he  saw  much  more  clearly  than  his  critics 
its  defects  and  immaturity ;  he  saw  also  its  sincerity 
and  value  as  the  fruit  of  a  ripening  art.  His  percep- 
tion of  its  defects  and  his  recognition  of  its  freshness 


158      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

and  deep  poetic  impulse  were  both  correct ;  for  no 
poet  ever  understood  himself  more  thoroughly.  With 
manly  integrity  and  simplicity  he  put  into  the  preface 
to  the  poem  a  clear  expression  of  his  feeling  toward 
his  work :  "  Knowing  within  myself  the  manner  in 
which  this  Poem  has  been  produced,"  he  wrote,  "  it 
is  not  without  a  feeling  of  regret  that  I  make  it  public. 
What  manner  I  mean  will  be  quite  clear  to  the  reader, 
who  must  soon  perceive  great  inexperience,  immatur- 
ity, and  every  error  denoting  a  feverish  attempt,  rather 
than  a  deed  accomplished.  .  .  .  The  imagination  of 
a  boy  is  healthy,  and  the  mature  imagination  of  a  man 
is  healthy ;  but  there  is  a  space  of  life  between  in 
which  the  soul  is  in  a  ferment,  the  character  unde- 
cided, the  way  01  life  uncertain,  the  ambition  thick- 
sighted."  It  was  this  "  space  of  life  between  "  which 
produced  "Endymion." 

The  story  was  one  of  the  most  familiar  in  that 
mythology  concerning  which,  in  the  same  preface,  he 
expressed  the  hope  that  he  had  not  touched  it  in  too 
late  a  day  and  dulled  its  brightness.  The  motive  of 
the  tale,  with  its  blending  of  youth,  love,  and  immor- 
tality, had  appealed  to  Theocritus  and  Ovid,  to  Lyly, 
to  Michael  Drayton,  to  Fletcher,  and  to  many  othei 
poets.  Its  suggestiveness  and  its  illusiveness  gave  it 
a  peculiar  charm  for  Keats,  and  at  the  same  time 
made  it  a  peculiarly  dangerous  theme.  That  he  failed 
to  assimilate  completely  the  incongruous  elements  in 
his  hands  is  evident ;  his  work  lives  not  by  reason  of 
its  perfect  structure,  but  by  reason  of  its  overflowing 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 59 

beauty  of  poetic  thought  and  diction.  Two  years 
later  it  is  possible  that  he  might  have  touched  it  with 
the  mastered  strength  which  stamps  the  fragment  of 
"  Hyperion."  Or  it  may  be  that  the  beautiful  fancy, 
so  alluring  and  so  prone  to  melt  into  cloud-mist  if 
you  look  at  it  steadily,  belongs  rather  to  the  ferment 
and  freshness  of  youth  than  to  the  definiteness  and 
ordered  strength  of  maturity.  "  Endymion  "  dis- 
closes to  the  reader  of  to-day  the  strength  and  the 
weakness  which  Keats  saw  in  it  before  the  garish 
light  of  criticism  fell  upon  it.  It  has  the  freshness  of 
feeling  and  perception,  the  glow  of  imagination,  the 
profusion  and  riot  of  imagery,  the  occasional  over- 
ripeness,  the  occasional  perfection  of  expression,  the 
lack  of  sustained  and  cumulative  power,  which  one 
would- expect  from  so  immature  a  mind  :  as  a  finished 
product  it  has  very  great  blemishes ;  as  the  work  of  a 
young  poet  it  overflows  with  promise.  One  wonders 
not  so  much  at  the  brutality  of  the  critics  as  at  their 
stupidity. 

Concerning  the  treatment  of  this  Greek  myth,  as 
concerning  his  treatment  of  Greek  themes  in  general, 
it  may  be  said  that  while  Keats  had  the  temperament 
of  the  Greek  in  his  delight  in  beauty  and  his  repose 
in  it,  his  manner  was  pre-eminently  romantic.  He  is 
as  far  removed  as  possible  from  the  classical  emphasis 
on  form  and  idea;  the  "Eve  of  Saint  Agnes"  may 
well  serve'  as  the  very  highest  type  of  the  romantic 
manner.  Its  splendid  colouring,  its  richness  of  tex- 
ture, its  warmth  and  fragrance,  mark  the  antipodes  of 


l6o      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  classical  manner.  "  Endymion  "  especially  dis- 
covers the  widest  divergence  from  Greek  models. 
Its  profusion  of  imagery,  its  mingling  of  often  inhar- 
monious elements,  and  its  vagueness  are  the  faults  of 
excessive  romanticism. 

After  the  publication  of  "  Endymion "  Keats  set 
off  on  the  interesting  but  unfortunate  northern  tour. 
The  scenery  and  associations  of  Scotland  stirred  his 
imagination  to  its  depths ;  but  the  exposure  of  the 
journey  told  heavily  on  a  frame  unequal  to  such  de- 
mands. From  Windermere  to  Ayr,  and  from  the 
Highlands  to  the  Hebrides,  through  scenes  touched 
with  whatever  is  great  in  English  literature  and  Scotch 
minstrelsy,  and  with  whatever  is  pathetic  and  vener- 
able in  the  history  of  both  countries,  the  ardent  young 
traveller  made  his  way,  eager,  enthusiastic,  often  in  a 
tempest  of  emotion,  —  the  mountains  for  the  first  time 
crowding  about  him,  and  Cary's  translation  of  Dante 
in  his  knapsack.  But  in  the  midst  of  this  great  expe- 
rience, the  first  distinct  symptoms  of  pulmonary 
disease  showed  themselves;  and  from  this  time,  with 
occasional  pauses,  the  poet's  health  steadily  failed. 

The  welcome  that  awaited  him  in  London  was  of 
the  most  ungracious  sort.  The  fourth  article  in  the 
series  on  the  "  Cockney  School  of  Poetry  "  appeared 
in  the  August  issue  of  "  Blackwood's  Magazine ; "  and 
the  criticism  in  the  "  Quarterly  Review "  saw  the 
light  in  September.  Too  much  importance  has  been 
attached  to  these  reviews,  which  are  likely  to  be 
remembered  hereafter  simply  as  prime  illustrations  of 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  l6l 

the  fallibility  of  criticism.  The  reviewers  did  not  kill 
Keats ;  and  the  tradition  that  fastened  this  crime  upon 
them  has  done  them  honour  overmuch,  while  it  has 
done  dishonour  to  the  poet.  The  sin  of  the  reviewers 
was  not  murder,  but  brutality,  vulgarity,  and  incred- 
ible stupidity.  That  the  reviews  were  unfavourable 
and  even  severe  was  a  small  matter ;  the  meanness  of 
the  onslaught  lay  in  their  indifference  to  the  decencies 
of  life,  their  unpardonable  allusions  to  personal  his- 
tory, their  coarse  contemptuousness. 

It  was  inevitable  that  a  man  so  sensitive  and  just  as 
Keats  should  feel  keenly  the  coarseness  and  meanness 
of  the  attack  on  his  work,  but  he  did  not  bend  under 
it.  That  it  touched  him  sharply  is  true ;  that  it 
touched  him  fatally  is  false.  His  was  too  sound  a 
nature,  too  great  a  mind,  to  feel  more  than  the 
momentary  pang  of  misunderstanding  and  misrepre- 
sentation. His  real  interest  was  in  his  art,  not  in  the 
recognition  of  his  art;  and  he  saw  far  more  clearly 
than  his  critics  the  defects  and  the  strength  of  his  first 
long  poem.  His  friends  were  in  a  ferment  of  indig- 
nation; Keats  was  calm  and  cheerful.  The  passing 
depression  which  prompted  him  to  declare  that  he 
would  write  no  more  poetry  speedily  gave  place  to  a 
clearer  insight  into  his  own  nature. 

"I  cannot  but  feel  indebted,"  he  wrote,  "to  those 
gentlemen  who  have  taken  my  part.  As  for  the  rest,  I 
begin  to  get  a  little  acquainted  with  my  own  strength  and 
weakness.  Praise  or  blame  has  but  a  momentary  effect 
on  the  man  whose  love  of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes 
ii 


1 62      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

him  a  severe  critic  of  his  own  work.  My  own  domestic 
criticism  has  given  me  pain  without  comparison  beyond 
what  '  Blackwood  '  or  the  4  Quarterly  '  could  possibly  in- 
flict; and  also  when  I  feel  I  am  right,  no  external  praise 
can  give  me  such  a  glow  as  my  own  solitary  reperception 
and  ratification  of  what  is  fine.  J.  S.  is  perfectly  right  in 
regard  to  the  slip-shod  'Endymion.'  That  it  is  so  is  no 
fault  of  mine.  No !  though  it  may  sound  a  little  para- 
doxical. It  is  as  good  as  I  had  power  to  make  it  —  by 
myself.  Had  I  been  nervous  about  its  being  a  perfect 
piece,  and  with  that  view  asked  advice,  and  trembled  over 
every  page,  it  would  not  have  been  written  ;  for  it  is  not 
in  my  nature  to  fumble,  —  I  will  write  independently. 
I  have  written  independently,  without  judgment  I  may 
write  independently,  and  with  judgment,  hereafter.  The 
Genius  of  Poetry  must  work  out  its  own  salvation  in  a 
man.  It  cannot  be  matured  by  law  and  precept,  but  by 
sensation  and  watchfulness  in  itself.  That  which  is  crea- 
tive must  create  itself.  In '  Endymion '  I  leaped  headlong 
into  the  sea,  and  thereby  have  become  better  acquainted 
with  the  soundings,  the  quicksands,  and  the  rocks,  than  if 
I  had  stayed  upon  the  shore  and  piped  a  silly  pipe,  and 
took  tea  and  comfortable  advice.  I  was  never  afraid  of 
failure ;  for  I  would  sooner  fail  than  not  be  among  the 
greatest." 

These  are  strong,  clear-sighted  words ;  they  have 
robust  sense,  courage,  and  virility  in  them  ;  they  were 
never  written  by  a  victim  of  stupid  criticism  or  by  a 
sentimental  weakling.  They  show  Keats  not  only 
resolutely  holding  to  his  ideals,  but  still  possessed  of 
that  dauntless  pluck  which  earlier  ran  to  an  excess 
of  pugnacity  on  the  playground.      The  reception  of 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 63 

"  Endymion  "  would  not  have  justified  so  full  a  dis- 
cussion at  this  late  day  had  it  not  been  for  the  popular 
tradition  which  transformed  a  clumsy  blow  with  a 
bludgeon  into  the  death-thrust  of  a  stiletto.  It  was, 
as  Keats  said  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  George,  "a 
mere  matter  of  the  moment."  And  in  the  calm  as- 
surance of  his  great  gifts  he  added,  "  I  think  I  shall 
be  among  the  English  Poets  after  my  death." 

And  now  the  story  of  the  poet's  life  hurries  on  to  its 
pathetic  close.  His  brother  Tom  died,  and  Keats  went 
to  live  with  his  friend  Charles  Brown.  He  was  writing 
"  Hyperion  "  and  coming  under  the  spell  of  Miss 
Fanny  Brawne,  —  a  spell  which,  in  the  delicate  condi- 
tion of  his  health  and  the  ferment  of  his  soul,  was  to 
work  him  harm.  It  was  a  hard  passage  in  a  life  over 
which  the  clouds  were  fast  gathering.  Tom  Keats 
dead,  George  gone  to  America,  his  work  spurned,  his 
personal  history  satirized,  his  health  swiftly  breaking, 
Keats  was  ill  fitted  to  resist  or  master  the  passion  which 
seized  him.  The  winter  was  full  of  intense  emotion, 
of  alternate  depression  and  exaltation ;  and  yet  in 
this  whirl  of  emotion  the  genius  of  Keats  burned  with 
a  pure  and  splendid  flame,  —  for  this  was  the  winter 
of"  Hyperion,"  "  The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes,"  the  "  Ode 
on  a  Grecian  Urn,"  the  "  Ode  to  Psyche,"  the  "  Ode 
to  a  Nightingale."  During  the  succeeding  summer 
"  Lamia  "  was  written  in  rhyming  heroics.  At  Win- 
chester, with  its  claustral  calm  and  its  venerable  ripe- 
ness and  beauty,  the  late  summer  and  early  autumn 
passed.     "  Otho  "  was  finished,  and  the  fragment  of 


164      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

"  Saint  Stephen  "  begun,  neither  with  any  degree  of 
success.  These  were  the  last  working-days,  and  the 
last  fruit  of  them  was  the  noble  ode  "  To  Autumn." 
These  brief  months  had  brought  out,  not  the  full 
measure,  but  the  ripe  power  of  Keats's  genius.  The 
apprenticeship  was  ended ;  the  artist  had  come  to  full 
stature.  Not  since  Spenser  had  there  been  a  purer 
gift  of  poetry  among  English-speaking  peoples ;  not 
since  Milton  a  line  of  nobler  balance  of  sound, 
thought,  and  cadence.  There  is  no  magic  of  colour  in 
written  speech  that  is  not  mixed  in  the  diction  of 
"  The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes,"  —  a  vision  of  beauty,  deep, 
rich,  and  glowing  as  one  of  those  dyed  windows  in 
which  the  heart  of  the  Middle  Ages  still  burns.  While 
of  the  odes,  so  perfect  in  form,  so  ripe  with  thought,  so 
informed  and  irradiated  by  the  vision  and  the  insight  of 
the  imagination,  what  remains  to  be  said  save  that  they 
furnish  us  with  the  tests  and  standards  of  poetry  itself? 
They  mark  the  complete  identification  of  thought  with 
form,  of  vision  with  faculty,  of  life  with  art. 

But  this  noble  power,  that  seemed  in  all  those 
months  to  create  with  a  divine  ease  out  of  a  divine  ful- 
ness, was  the  final  energy  of  an  expiring  life.  Keats 
returned  to  London  in  October,  1819.  On  the  advice 
of  Brown  he  tried  his  hand  at  a  satiric  piece  with  a 
fairy  background  ;  but  he  failed  where  Leigh  Hunt 
might  have  succeeded.  The  "  Cap  and  Bells  "  is  not 
without  happy  phrases,  nor  is  it  lacking  in  music,  but 
Keats's  heart  was  not  in  it,  and  where  his  heart  was 
not,   neither  was  his   genius.     Meanwhile  the  con- 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  1 65 

sciousness  of  ebbing  strength,  the  bitterness  of  great 
achievements  never  to  be  made,  of  a  consuming 
passion  never  to  be  satisfied,  preyed  on  him  like  a 
vulture.  The  strain  of  genius  is  a  very  real  thing,  — 
the  strain  of  an  imagination  easily  exalted  and  stimu- 
lated, of  emotions  swiftly  fired  and  of  devouring 
intensity,  of  a  temperament  sensitive  to  every  wind 
and  shadow.  This  strain  Keats  felt  in  all  its  intensity. 
There  were  the  usual  pauses  which  mark  the  course 
of  pulmonary  disease ;  but  there  was  no  hope  from 
the  beginning.  In  July  the  third  and  last  volume  of 
poems  came  from  the  press,  containing  the  work  of 
Keats's  best  period,  which  extended  from  the  early 
spring  of  18 18  to  the  late  autumn  of  18 19.  Poetry 
of  so  unmistakable  a  quality  could  not  and  did  not 
fail  of  recognition.  Nothing  approaching  popularity 
came  to  the  poet ;  but  discerning  people  responded 
generously  to  this  new  appeal  for  recognition ;  there 
was  a  kindly  notice  in  the  "  Edinburgh  Review ;  "  and 
there  was  a  respectable  sale  of  the  book. 

Keats  meanwhile  was  going  through  the  supreme 
crisis ;  and  no  one  can  read  the  passionate  outcries 
which  his  letters  to  Fanny  Brawne  became  in  those 
days  without  passing  by  with  uncovered  head.  There 
are  confidences  too  sacred  even  for  the  glance  of 
friendship,  and  there  are  struggles  too  bitter  to  pre- 
serve in  any  permanent  record.  It  was  inevitable  that 
this  strong  nature,  holding  fame  and  love  within 
reach,  should  rebel  against  the  last  terrible  decree  of 
renunciation;  it  was  also  inevitable  that  this  strong 


1 66       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

nature  should  reconcile  itself  to  life  and  die  with  the 
courage  of  a  great  human  soul.  In  September  Keats 
left  London  for  Italy.  On  shipboard  his  genius 
blazed  up  once  more  from  the  ashes  that  were  fast 
covering  it ;  and  on  a  blank  leaf  of  a  copy  of  Shake- 
speare he  wrote  the  beautiful  sonnet  beginning, 
"  Bright  Star,  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art !  " 
and  containing  the  noble  figure  of 

"  The  moving  waters  at  their  priest-like  task 
Of  cold  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores." 

In  Rome  he  was  cheerful  and  serene.  There  were 
short  walks;  there  was  even  a  plan  for  a  poem  in 
Sabina.  But  the  end  was  close  at  hand.  There  was 
a  sudden  relapse  and  then  a  partial  rally,  but  no  more 
hope.  Keats  was  longing  for  the  great  peace,  and 
sustaining  himself  by  listening  to  the  prose  of  Jeremy 
Taylor  and  to  the  sonatas  of  Haydn.  On  the  23d  of 
February,  1821,  he  called  Severn  to  lift  him  up :  "I 
am  dying ;  I  shall  die  easy.  Don't  be  frightened ;  be 
firm,  and  thank  God  it  has  come."  Three  days  after, 
he  was  buried  in  the  quiet  cemetery  where  Severn 
himself  sixty  years  later  was  to  lie  beside  him,  and 
where  Shelley  also  sleeps  under  the  soft  Italian  sky,  — 
so  near  the  ancient  tumult  of  Rome,  and  yet  wrapped 
about  by  the  eternal  silence. 

"  He  dwelt  with  the  bright  gods  of  elder  time, 
On  earth  and  in  their  cloudy  haunts  above. 
He  loved  them  ;  and,  in  recompense  sublime, 
The  gods,  alas  I  gave  him  their  fatal  love." 


JOHN  KEATS.-  POET  AND  MAN.  167 

The  story  of  Keats' s  life  is  also  the  story  of  his 
genius  and  his  art,  for  no  English  poet  has  more 
entirely  illustrated  the  truth  of  Goethe's  declaration 
that  "  everything  that  man  undertakes  to  produce, 
whether  by  action,  word,  or  in  whatsoever  manner, 
ought  to  spring  from  the  union  of  all  his  faculties." 
Keats's  verse  has  this  wholeness,  this  inevitableness ; 
it  is  no  play  of  fancy,  no  cleverness  of  mind,  no  skill 
of  hand,  no  dexterity  of  culture ;  it  is  the  expression 
of  the  man  in  his  contact  with  nature  and  life.  Its 
very  immaturity  is  the  evidence  of  its  reality ;  it  be- 
trays no  early  precocity  of  technical  cunning,  but  the 
tumultuous  strength  of  a  poetic  nature  coming  to  a 
knowledge  of  itself.  The  great  style  was  to  come,  as 
the  great  style  always  comes,  from  the  full  and  har- 
monious expression  of  a  powerful  and  capacious  per- 
sonality. Keats  was  not  to  be  a  maker  of  a  verse 
only,  but  a  revealer  of  the  thought  that  is  everywhere 
one  with  beauty ;  and  that  thought  was  to  show  itself 
to  him  only  with  the  ripening  of  his  nature  under  the 
touch  of  life.  What  he  did,  therefore,  pure  and  per- 
fect as  its  quality  is,  was  the  promise  rather  than  the 
performance  of  his  genius.  "If  I  should  die,"  he 
wrote  on  one  of  the  last  days,  "  I  have  left  no  im- 
mortal work  behind  me,  —  nothing  to  make  my  friends 
proud  of  my  memory ;  but  I  have  loved  the  principle 
of  beauty  in  all  things."  It  was  the  passion  of  his 
soul  that  was  real  to  him  in  those  final  days,  not  the 
expression  of  it ;  and  while  it  is  true  that  his  passion 
has  left  its  immortal  records,  it  is  also  true  that  he  had 


1 68       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

followed  the  principle  of  beauty  but  a  little  way  when 
the  shadows  overtook  him. 

The  tradition  of  his  lack  of  moral  stamina  has  per- 
haps bred  the  other  misconception  that  he  was  de- 
fective on  the  side  of  intellectual  strenuousness.  The 
beauty  of  his  work  has  by  strange  lack  of  insight  been 
taken  as  evidence  of  its  defect  in  range  and  depth. 
Keats  was  sensuous,  as  all  great  poets  must  be,  if  we 
are  to  accept  the  testimony  of  the  nobly  arduous 
Milton ;  but  the  richness  of  his  diction  carries  with  it 
the  impression  of  immense  intellectual  resource.  It  is 
not  beauty  of  form  and  colour  alone  which  gives  the 
"  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn"  and  the  ode  "To  Autumn  " 
their  changeless  spell ;  it  is  that  interior  beauty  of 
which  Keats  was  thinking  when  he  wrote  those  pro- 
found lines,  the  very  essence  of  his  creed :  — 

"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty,  —  that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

For  the  highest  uses  of  thought  there  has  been  no 
greater  blunder  than  the  division  of  the  indivisible 
nature  of  deity  into  attributes,  of  the  immortal  soul  of 
man  into  perishing  senses  and  faculties,  of  the  seam- 
less garment  of  the  universe  into  parts  and  patches. 
This  is  the  method  of  logic,  which  deals  with  the  mani- 
festations and  appearances  of  things ;  it  is  never  the 
method  of  the  imagination,  which,  by  insight,  deals 
with  the  things  themselves.  Keats's  greatness  lay  in 
his  mastery  of  the  unity  of  life  and  his  identification 
of  the  highest  beauty  with  the  highest  truth.     God  is 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  169 

an  artist  as  fundamentally  and  much  more  obviously 
than  he  is  a  moralist.  It  is  a  noble  and  necessary  ser- 
vice which  they  render  who  uncover  the  lines  of 
moral  order  along  which  the  universe  is  built ;  but  it 
is  an  equally  noble  and  inevitable  service  which  they 
perform  who  make  us  see  the  beauty  which  is  not 
the  ornament  of  righteousness,  but  the  breathing  soul 
of  it. 

Keats  had  this  vision  of  the  soul  of  things ;  he  was 
no  idle  singer  of  sensuous  moods ;  he  was  a  resolute 
and  clear-sighted  pursuer  of  the  Ideal  which  forever 
flies  at  our  approach  that  our  reluctant  feet  may  be 
forever  lured  onward ;  a  passionate  lover  of  that  Ideal 
which  no  sooner  enshrines  itself  in  one  beautiful  form 
than  it  escapes  to  become  again  a  thing  of  the  spirit. 
Keats  knew  the  ardours  rather  than  the  pleasures  of 
song,  to  recall  his  own  phrase  about  Milton.  He  was 
alive  to  the  need  of  moral  sanity  and  power.  In  a 
letter  to  his  brothers,  after  speaking  of  the  "  Excur- 
sion," Haydon's  pictures,  and  Hazlitt's  depth  of  taste 
as  the  three  superior  things  in  the  modern  world,  he 
quickly  adds :  "  Not  thus  speaking  with  any  poor 
vanity  that  works  of  genius  were  the  first  things  in 
this  world.  No  !  for  that  sort  of  probity  and  disin- 
terestedness which  such  men  as  Bailey  possess  does 
hold  and  grasp  the  tiptop  of  any  spiritual  honours 
that  can  be  paid  to  anything  in  this  world ;  "  and  he 
asks  to  be  credited  with  a  deeper  feeling  and  devo- 
tion for  uprightness  "  than  for  any  marks  of  genius, 
however  splendid."     He  saw  with  a  keen,  clear  eye 


170    ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

who,  himself  a  young  man,  could  pierce  the  splendid 
mist  which  surrounded  Byron  in  those  days,  and  char- 
acterize him  as  "  a  fine  thing  in  the  sphere  of  the 
worldly,  theatrical,  and  pantomimical."  Integrity, 
honour,  and  courage  were  as  much  a  part  of  Keats's 
nature  as  sensitiveness  and  the  love  of  beauty. 

"  I  could  not  live  without  the  love  of  my  friends," 
he  writes,  ..."  but  I  hate  a  mawkish  popularity.  .  .  . 
I  have  not  the  slightest  feeling  of  humility  towards  the 
public  or  to  anything  in  existence  but  the  Eternal 
Being,  the  Principle  of  Beauty,  and  the  Memory  of 
Great  Men."  George  Keats  was  irreverent,  but  not 
far  wrong,  when,  referring  to  the  poor  creature  which 
some  critics  and  literary  circles  put  in  the  place  of 
this  virile  and  vigorous  nature,  he  said  that  his  brother 
was  "  as  much  like  the  Holy  Ghost  as  Johnny  Keats." 

Keats's  letters  are  less  mature,  less  finished,  than 
the  letters  of  Cowper  or  of  Shelley;  but  they  are 
more  intimate,  more  autobiographic.  They  furnish  a 
fairly  complete  record  of  the  poet's  moods  and 
thoughts  from  the  early  spring  of  181 7  to  the  late 
autumn  of  1820,  —  the  period  of  his  most  rapid 
growth,  of  his  best  work,  and  of  his  deepest  personal 
history.  Leigh  Hunt  saw  him  as  a  young  man,  some- 
what under  the  middle  height,  with  a  face  full  of  energy 
and  sensibility,  a  pugnacious  mouth,  a  bold  chin,  and 
eyes  "  mellow  and  glowing,  large,  dark,  and  sensitive." 
At  the  recital  of  a  noble  action  or  a  beautiful  thought, 
the  mouth  trembled,  and  the  eyes  were  suffused  with 
tears.   A  strong,  virile,  sensitive  nature  evidently ;  and 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN  171 

the  letters  confirm  the  testimony  of  the  face.  They 
show  Keats  responsive  to  the  beauty  of  the  world, 
full  of  generous  feeling,  unselfish,  high-minded,  with 
clear  ideas  of  his  art  and  a  large  and  growing  per- 
ception of  its  range.  In  "  Sleep  and  Poetry,"  which 
found  a  place  in  his  first  published  work,  the  volume 
of  181 7,  he  wrote  out  his  poetical  creed,  —  a  creed 
which  he  might  have  touched  later  with  finer  art,  but 
which  he  never  outgrew.  After  marking  his  diver- 
gence from  the  standards  and  methods  of  the  preced- 
ing period  of  English  verse,  he  predicted  the  stages 
of  his  own  progress  :  — 

"  First  the  realm  I  '11  pass 
Of  Flora  and  old  Pan :  sleep  in  the  grass, 
Feed  upon  apples  red,  and  strawberries, 
And  choose  each  pleasure  that  my  fancy  sees." 

No  modern  poet  has  been  more  at  home  in  that 
realm  of  the  obvious  bloom  of  the  world,- — the 
realm  of  the  Greek  lyric  and  pastoral  poets  and  of 
many  later  singers ;  nor  has  any  modern  poet  brought 
back  more  vividly  the  fading  glories  of  that  realm. 
But  Keats  was  to  pass  through  that  realm,  not  to 
abide  in  it :  — 

"  And  can  I  ever  bid  these  joys  farewell  ? 
Yes,  I  must  pass  them  for  a  nobler  life, 
"Where  I  may  find  the  agonies,  the  strife 
Of  human  hearts." 

"  Scenery  is  fine,  but  human  nature  is  finer,"  he 
wrote  in  prose.    "  The  sward  is  richer  for  the  tread  of 


172       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

a  real  nervous  English  foot ;  the  eagle's  nest  is  finer 
for  the  mountaineer  having  looked  into  it."  He  had 
steeped  himself  in  the  rich  beauty  of  first  impres- 
sions ;  but  he  was  to  make  the  steep  ascent  where 
great  thoughts  are  nurtured  like  the  young  eagles  in 
the  nests  seen  only  by  the  mountaineer.  There  were 
possibilities  of  heroic  endeavour  in  him.  He  knew 
what  self-denial,  self-control,  and  solitude  of  spirit  lie 
before  one  who  would  master  any  art,  but  he  did  not 
draw  back.  "  I  must  think  that  difficulties  nerve  the 
spirit  of  man ;  they  make  our  prime  objects  a  refuge 
as  well  as  a  passion."  It  was  a  clear  insight  that 
thus  early  discerned  this  deep  truth  in  the  life  of  the 
artist.  To  wring  from  great  endeavour  not  only  the 
achievement,  but  the  joy  of  it ;  to  make  the  agony  of 
toil  contribute  to  the  finished  work  a  depth  and  ripe- 
ness denied  to  skill  divorced  from  profound  experi- 
ence,—  this  is  to  have  mastered  the  secret  of  art. 
Keats  discerned  a  larger  world  than  that  he  had  yet 
walked  in,  a  deeper  vision  of  life  than  that  he  had 
yet  seen;  and  he  knew  that  these  things  were  to 
come  to  him  through  the  expansion  of  his  own  nature 
under  the  training  of  life,  and  the  enlargement  of 
his  thought  through  wider  knowledge.  In  a  letter 
written  to  John  Taylor  in  18 18  he  says:  "I  know 
nothing ;  I  have  read  nothing  ;  and  I  mean  to  follow 
Solomon's  directions,  '  Get  learning ;  get  under- 
standing.' I  find  earlier  days  are  gone  by;  I  find 
that  I  have  no  enjoyment  in  the  world  but  continual 
drinking  of  knowledge.     I  find  there  is  no  worthy 


JOHN  KEATS:  POET  AND  MAN.  173 

pursuit  but  the  idea  of  doing  some  good  in  the  world. 
Some  do  it  with  their  society ;  some  with  their  wit ; 
some  with  their  benevolence ;  some  with  a  sort  of 
power  of  conferring  pleasure  and  good-humour  on 
all  they  meet,  and  in  a  thousand  ways,  —  all  dutiful  to 
the  command  of  Great  Nature.  There  is  but  one  way 
for  me.  The  road  lies  through  application,  study, 
and  thought;  I  will  pursue  it." 

"The  road  lies  through  application,  study,  and 
thought."  Would  it  be  possible  to  state  more  simply  the 
conditions  attached  to  the  production  of  the  greatest 
works  of  art,  —  the  "Divine  Comedy,"  Shakespeare's 
tragedies,  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  for  instance  ?  Surely  one 
need  not  search  further  to  discover  the  possibilities 
of  strenuous  intellectual  and  spiritual  development 
which  were  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  Keats,  nor  how 
secondary  was  the  purely  sensuous  quality  in  which 
some  critics  have  found  his  sole  poetic  gift.  In  that 
sensuousness  lay  the  promise  of  a  prime  which,  had 
it  come,  might  have  recalled  the  noontide  of  Spenser 
and  Shakespeare. 

Keats  saw  the  road,  but  he  was  not  to  take  it ;  dis- 
ease and  death  had  written  "  No  thoroughfare  "  across 
it ;  the  great  nature  was  to  give  us  only  the  prodigal 
richness  of  its  first  blossoming ;  the  ripening  summer 
and  the  fruitful  autumn  were  shared  in  other  fields 
than  ours. 

But  how  deep  was  the  loveliness  of  that  early  put- 
ting forth  of  the  young  imagination  !  It  was  no 
delicate  fancy,  no  light  touch  of  skill,  no  precocious 


174      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

brightness  of  spirit,  which  Keats  gave  the  world  :  it 
was  pure  imagination,  —  that  rarest  and  most  precious 
because  most  creative  of  gifts.  The  ode  "  To  Au- 
tumn" and  "The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes"  are  beautiful 
to  the  very  heart ;  they  are  not  clothed  with  beauty ; 
they  are  beauty  itself.  There  is  a  vast  difference 
between  thought  turned  into  poetry,  such  as  one 
sometimes  comes  upon  in  Goethe  and  Words- 
worth, and  thought  that  was  born  poetry.  Since 
Spenser  Keats  is  the  most  poetical  of  poets,  because 
his  thought  was  poetry,  —  because  he  saw  with  the 
imagination;  and  what  he  saw  flashed  into  images, 
figures,  metaphors,  —  the  fresh  and  glowing  speech  of 
poetry.  In  this  process  his  soul  was  in  contact  with 
the  soul  of  things,  not  with  their  surface  beauty. 
"  When  I  wrote  it,"  he  said  of  one  of  his  poems,  "  it 
was  a  regular  stepping  of  the  imagination  toward  a 
truth."  And  again :  "  What  the  imagination  seizes 
as  beauty  must  be  truth,  whether  it  existed  before  or 
not.  .  .  .  The  imagination  may  be  compared  to 
Adam's  dream :  he  awoke  and  found  it  truth." 
There  is  the  secret  of  Keats's  genius  and  art,  —  the 
secret  and  the  promise.  He  left  much,  and  of  the 
rarest ;  he  would  have  done  more.  It  is  enough  that, 
except  Shakespeare,  no  English  poet  has  found  such 
colour  in  our  speech,  has  made  it  linger  in  the  ear  in 
phrase  so  rich  and  full.  This  magical  note,  heard 
only  in  the  greatest  poetry,  is  heard  in  Keats,  —  the 
evidence  alike  of  the  rare  quality  of  his  genius  and  its 
depth  and  power. 


Dante. 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM 
DANTE. 

It  is  characteristic  of  a  mind  of  the  first  order 
that  its  relations  to  life  are  never  at  any  moment  com- 
pletely discerned,  —  that  with  every  turn  of  events  a 
new  light  shines  from  it,  and  for  every  generation  it 
has  a  fresh  word.  For  this  reason  the  greatest  books 
are  always  contemporary ;  they  are  in  vital  contact 
with  the  life  that  is,  while  they  conserve  and  illustrate 
the  life  that  was.  In  a  noble  sense,  they  are  our 
masters,  and  we  cannot  escape  from  them.  They  con- 
stantly compel  us  to  study  them  anew ;  in  every  hour 
when  we  believe  we  have  mastered  them,  they  reverse 
the  relation,  and  silently  re-establish  their  supremacy. 
The  world  has  been  reading  the  book  of  Job  for  at 
least  three  thousand  years ;  but  it  has  only  begun  to 
read  that  sublime  argument  with  a  true  discernment 
of  its  passionate  impulse  and  its  prophetic  drift.  The 
measure  of  greatness  in  a  book  is  the  extent  and  close- 
ness of  its  correspondence  with  life ;  and  we  must 
wait  on  life  to  discover  that  which  life  alone  can  evoke 
by  fitting  the  text  to  the  comment,  by  adding  the  fact 
to  the  illustration.  Of  no  writer  is  this  truer  than 
of  Dante,  —  so  long  familiar,  so  intensely  studied,  so 
widely  discussed.      Insight  however  keen  and  true, 


176       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

scholarship  however  searching  and  profound,  have  left 
the  "  Divine  Comedy  "  as  fresh,  as  suggestive,  as  inex- 
haustible as  it  was  when  it  came,  without  note  or  com- 
ment, into  the  hands  of  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio. 
Life  is,  after  all,  the  only  authoritative  and  final  com- 
mentator on  Dante ;  and  life  has  yet  in  reserve  mean- 
ings which  a  longer  experience  and  a  vaster  history  will 
break  open  to  the  very  heart.  When  a  great  nature, 
speaking  out  of  that  unconsciousness  which,  to  borrow 
Froebel's  phrase,  is  rest  in  God,  gives  its  interpretation 
of  life,  all  history  must  disapprove  or  confirm  it.  The 
judgment  of  any  particular  age  is  at  the  best  pro- 
visional, and  may  be  overruled  a  century  or  ten  cen- 
turies later.  It  is  part  of  the  greatness  of  such  nature 
that  it  compels  judgment  from  each  successive  gen- 
eration. As  the  stern  figure  of  the  man  upon  whom 
the  women  of  Ravenna  looked  askance,  because  he 
had  walked  in  Hell,  passed  through  the  streets  of  the 
cities  of  his  exile,  a  silent  judgment  upon  corruption 
and  frivolity  went  with  him.  Such  heroic  fidelity, 
such  lofty  scorn  of  compromise,  such  toil  of  spirit, 
searched  out  and  laid  bare  the  meanness  and  shallow- 
ness of  current  ideals  and  conduct.  When  such  a  man 
sets  foot  in  any  community,  a  standard  of  character 
becomes  distinct  and  commanding,  and  compels  clear 
discrimination  between  the  base  and  the  noble,  the 
heroic  and  the  cowardly.  It  is  as  impossible  to  keep 
Dante  out  of  sight,  in  measuring  achievement  in 
Verona  and  Lucca  and  Ravenna  at  the  beginning  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  as  to  exclude  from  the  field 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      1 77 

of  vision  the  Alps  when  one  looks  at  the  plains  of 
Lombardy. 

As  with  the  man,  so  with  the  work :  they  are  both 
come  not  to  bring  peace,  but  a  sword.  Deeply  sig- 
nificant is  this  quality  inherent  in  every  great  work 
of  literature  which  compels  each  successive  age  to 
measure  by  these  enduring  standards  its  own  achieve- 
ments. Every  epic  recalls  Homer;  every  drama 
evokes  Shakespeare.  The  necessity  of  this  constant 
reference  to  the  master- works  —  this  perpetual  return  of 
thought  to  them,  this  perennial  renewal  of  interest  in 
them  —  explains  the  fact  that  every  new  age  and  every 
new  movement  in  literature  invariably  attempts  a  new 
translation  of  the  masterpieces.  We  are  never  done 
with  Homer.  Chapman  gave  us  the  Elizabethan  con- 
ception of  the  old  poet, — turbulent,  dramatic,  splendid 
of  colour ;  Pope,  the  conception  of  the  so-called  clas- 
sical age  in  English  letters,  —  smooth,  melodious,  arti- 
ficial ;  Cowper,  the  Homer  of  the  poetic  reaction  of 
the  first  quarter  of  the  century,  —  unaffected,  simple, 
sincere.  We  have  the  Homer  of  every  recent  century, 
and  we  have  also  the  Homer  of  the  romantic  school, 
of  the  classical  school,  of  the  dramatic  school,  of  the 
ballad  school.  Every  age  and  every  literary  move- 
ment pours  an  early  libation  at  this  shrine.  This 
tribute  is  not  paid  to  Homer  the  traditional  classic, 
but  to  Homer  the  great  artist,  who  felt  and  caught 
in  speech  something  of  the  immortal  freshness,  the 
tumultuous  rush,  of  life.  There  will  never  be  a  final 
translation  of  Homer  or  of  Dante  into  English :  it  is 


178       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

only  to  those  who  live  at  their  feet  that  the  mountains 
appear  the  same  from  day  to  day ;  to  those  who  travel 
they  are  always  looming  up  in  new  relations  to  each 
other,  —  they  are  always  discovering  changes  of  out- 
line and  mass,  as  they  are  seen  from  different  points 
of  view. 

This  prophetic  quality  —  which  speaks  not  to  its 
own  time,  but  to  posterity  —  is  in  the  man  before  it 
is  in  the  work ;  it  cannot  be  in  the  work  unless  it  first 
be  in  the  man.  In  all  literature  there  is  no  man  so 
completely  possessed  by  it  as  Dante,  —  none  whose 
life  and  work  are  so  entirely  fused,  none  whose  life 
and  work  so  clearly  disclose  the  conditions  out  of 
which  the  greatest  works  of  art  issue ;  none,  therefore, 
so  unmistakably  and  sublimely  prophetic.  For  the 
essence  of  prophecy  is  not  the  discernment  of  the 
coming  event,  —  the  sudden  flash  of  light  on  the  dis- 
tant point ;  it  is  rather  the  illustration  of  those  deep 
and  fundamental  laws  which,  once  clearly  seen,  once 
perfectly  obeyed,  make  the  future  luminous  and  com- 
prehensible. The  soul  that  has  seen  God,  and  grasped 
once  and  forever  the  law  of  righteousness  that  runs 
its  divine  illumination  through  the  universe,  knows 
the  course  of  events,  and  can  predict  to  a  certainty  the 
main  drift  of  history.  Such  a  soul  will  never  be  con- 
fused by  the  glitter  of  easy  prosperity,  or  the  eager 
and  audacious  energy  of  materialism ;  it  will  always 
search  for  the  moral  quality  behind  the  apparent  suc- 
cess, and  measure  progress  by  the  advance  or  the  de- 
cay of  character.     It  will  discern  the  approach  of 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FRON  DANTE.      179 

disaster  when  others  see  only  the  shows  of  prosperity ; 
it  will  recognize  the  coming  of  empire  when  others 
see  only  the  decline  and  decay  of  power.  There  are 
prophets  the  use  of  whose  gift  is  confined  to  infrequent 
moments,  and  there  are  prophets  whose  grasp  of  the 
principles  of  life  is  so  powerful,  and  whose  insight  into 
its  significance  is  so  sure  and  penetrating,  that  history 
unfolds  before  them  like  an  unrolled  map.  To  really 
see  God  once  is  to  see  him  forever;  to  get  at  the 
heart  of  life  in  any  age  is  to  master  it  for  all  ages. 
Such  a  man  was  Dante,  —  when  we  get  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  his  life  and  his  work,  perhaps  the  greatest 
man  in  history  ;  the  greatest  because  of  this  prophetic 
quality,  this  laying  bare  of  the  laws  upon  which  life 
rests,  this  sublime  reading  of  the  page  of  history  be- 
fore it  has  become  legible  by  holding  it  between  the 
mortal  eye  and  that  light  whence  all  illumination 
qomes. 

The  uses  of  such  a  man  as  Dante  are  manifold,  and 
they  have  not  lacked  record.  Some  of  them  have  al- 
ways been  evident ;  others  are  beginning  to  make 
themselves  clear;  others  still  wait  the  unfolding  of 
the  future.  To  have  seen  life  under  the  conditions 
of  eternity  is  to  become  in  every  age  a  stern  and  aw- 
ful judge,  a  silent  and  majestic  teacher.  Dante  could 
afford  to  spend  his  life  apart  from  Florence ;  he  can 
afford  to  wait  for  the  complete  and  final  recognition 
of  what  he  was  and  what  he  achieved.  Our  concern 
is  not  with  his  fame,  but  with  his  lesson  for  us.  As 
a  poet  or  maker,  as  an  artist,  he  has  for  our  time,  with 


180      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

its  distractions  and  temptations  for  those  who  touch 
in  any  way  the  ideal,  an  invigorating  and  sanative 
quality.  Art  is  not  inspired  by  art,  but  by  life ;  we 
shall  never  write  great  books  by  reading  Dante ;  the 
great  books  must  be  in  us  as  they  were  in  him.  But 
there  are  moods  which  favour  the  growth  of  art ;  there 
are  prosperous  influences  which  make  some  days  fer- 
tile above  all  the  year.  And  while  the  secret  of  the 
great  artist  is  incommunicable,  his  attitude  toward  life, 
his  use  of  materials,  his  thought  of  the  thing  he  was 
sent  to  do,  and  his  manner  of  doing  it,  are  unconcealed. 
The  greater  the  man  the  simpler  are  his  methods. 
There  is  no  artifice,  no  magic,  no  esoteric  skill  about 
the  methods  of  greatness;  they  have  the  elemental 
simplicity  and  breadth  of  the  processes  of  Nature. 
"  My  secrets  have  been  few,"  said  Savonarola  on  the 
rack,  "  because  my  purposes  have  been  great." 

At  a  time  when  the  men  who  make  whatever  litera- 
ture we  possess  are  under  such  pressure  from  conflict- 
ing tendencies,  when  skill  is  so  constantly  confused 
with  the  creative  power,  when  the  noise  of  the  mo- 
ment makes  the  silence  of  the  centuries  so  difficult  to 
believe  or  rest  in,  Dante  has  resources  of  service  such 
as  no  other  poet  offers.  An  age  of  expansion  needs  to 
study  the  man  whose  spirit  knew  all  the  rigours  of  con- 
centration and  all  the  anguish  of  intensity ;  an  age 
of  many-sided  activity  and  large  tolerance  of  pleasure 
stands  in  special  need  of  the  poet  who  felt  the  flames 
of  Hell  blown  upon  him,  and  who  heard  the  bitter 
rain  of  tears  in  Purgatory.     Not  that  our  age  is  less 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      l8l 

noble  than  his,  or  our  spiritual  vision  less  true  than 
his,  but  that  our  peculiar  temptations  find  in  him  their 
special  antagonist. 

What  made  Dante  the  supreme  artist  that  he  was  is 
a  question  which  cannot  be  answered  until  we  know 
more  about  the  individual  spirit  than  we  know  to-day, 
—  a  good  deal  more  than  current  ways  of  looking  at 
and  explaining  genius  are  likely  to  secure  for  us.  But 
leaving  the  fundamental  impulse  to  the  mystery  which 
hides  every  point  of  contact  between  the  individual 
life  and  the  sustaining  principle  of  life,  there  are  cer- 
tain things  about  Dante  which  go  far  to  account  for 
the  greatness  of  his  work,  —  which  we  may  accept, 
therefore,  as  the  methods  and  conditions  which  foster 
the  production  of  the  greatest  works  of  art.  In  these 
things  we  discover  the  prophetic  character  of  Dante 
as  a  literary  artist;  prophetic,  because  the  methods 
and  conditions  were  in  accordance  with  the  law  of 
fertility  and  productiveness,  and  certain,  therefore,  in 
some  form,  and  with  the  modifications  involved  in 
changed  habits  of  life,  to  reappear  in  connection  with 
all  work  of  kindred  range  and  power. 

At  the  first  glance  no  career  seems  so  unfavourable 
to  the  production  of  great  art  of  any  kind  as  Dante's. 
He  was  fortunate  in  his  age ;  there  were  "  ten  silent 
centuries  "  waiting  for  him ;  there  was  a  new  world 
of  thought  and  art  rising  out  of  the  long  repose,  the 
rich  soil  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  was  fortunate  in  the 
city  of  his  birth,  —  that  historic  city  not  yet  enriched 
by  the  loving  genius  of  the  Renaissance,  but  already 


182       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

beautiful ;  turbulent  with  the  fierce  life  of  powerful 
personalities ;  the  very  nursery  of  great  minds  and 
lofty  ideals.  He  was  fortunate  too  in  that  vision  of 
virginal  loveliness  which  crossed  his  path  in  his  ninth 
year,  never  again  to  be  absent  from  any  world,  seen  or 
unseen,  in  which  he  found  himself.  But  here,  to  an 
eye  which  sees  the  soil  and  not  the  seed,  the  pros- 
perous conditions  ended.  The  time  of  preparation 
was  golden ;  but  the  time  of  performance,  the  years 
in  which  vision  and  toil  are  one,  those  sublime  years 
when  a  man's  soul  goes  out  of  him  in  imperishable 
word  and  deed,  —  over  these  years  what  blackness  of 
weariness  and  sorrow ;  what  brooding  of  storm  and 
strife  !  Exiled  at  thirty-seven,  wandering  henceforth 
from  city  to  city,  from  court  to  court,  pursued  always 
by  that  shadow  of  a  lost  happiness,  accompanied 
always  by  that  spirit  of  fierce  indignation  and  fiery 
revolt,  beset  always  by  the  strange  face  and  the  re- 
luctant hand,  always  sore  at  heart  and  solitary  in 
spirit,  —  surely  never  was  a  great  artist  so  hopelessly 
cast  upon  adverse  conditions  !  And  yet  these  con- 
ditions, which  would  have  broken  a  soul  less  hardy,  a 
genius  less  self-sustaining,  became  contributing  forces 
to  the  depth  and  power  of  his  work. 

If  he  had  been  like  Heine  or  Alfred  de  Musset, 
he  would  have  spent  himself  in  delicate  but  piercing 
irony,  in  exquisite  transcriptions  of  a  baffled  and  broken 
spirit.  But  he  was  the  child  of  his  age  only  in  so  far  as 
he  used  its  speech  and  suffered  it  to  strike  the  chords 
of  his  soul ;  the  music  was  in  him,  not  in  the  tempest 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.     183 

which  evoked  it.  His  mastery  of  his  time  lay  in  the 
fact  that  it  developed  harmony  instead  of  discord  in 
him ;  that  for  its  bufferings  he  gave  it  an  immortal 
song.  So  far  removed  was  he  from  the  weakness 
of  despair,  from  the  pitiful  malady  of  pessimism 
which  falls  helpless  because  an  obstacle  lies  in  its 
path,  —  that  disease  of  temperament  so  often  mis- 
taken in  these  days  for  genius.  When  one  remem- 
bers what  depths  of  pride  and  sensitiveness  were  in 
Dante,  what  possibilities  of  suffering  were  latent  in 
the  very  nature  of  the  man,  and  what  fortune  befell 
him,  the  sufferings  of  the  whole  school  of  pessimists 
and  sentimentalists  become  things  of  mockery  and 
shame.  They  sing  out  of  their  weakness,  and  he  out 
of  his  strength :  they  bend  and  fall ;  he  rises  and 
triumphs.  "  Can  I  not  everywhere  behold  the  mir- 
rors of  the  sun  and  stars?  speculate  on  sweetest 
truths  under  any  sky,  without  first  giving  myself  up 
inglorious,  nay,  ignominious,  to  the  populace  and 
city  of  Florence?"  These  words  were  not  lightly 
written :  they  issued  out  of  a  nature  which  felt  the 
constant  anguish  of  banishment.  "  Through  all  the 
parts  where  this  language  [Italian]  is  spoken,"  writes 
the  same  hand  in  the  "  Convito,"  "  a  wanderer,  well- 
nigh  a  beggar,  I  have  gone,  showing  against  my  will 
the  wound  of  fortune.  Truly  I  have  been  a  vessel  with- 
out sail  or  rudder,  driven  to  diverse  ports,  estuaries, 
and  shores  by  that  hot  blast,  —  the  breath  of  grievous 
poverty ;  and  I  have  shown  myself  to  the  eyes  of 
many  who  perhaps,  through  some  fame  of  me,  had 


1 84      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

imagined  me  in  quite  other  guise,  —  in  whose  view  not 
only  was  my  person  debased,  but  every  work  of  mine, 
whether  done  or  yet  to  do,  became  of  less  account." 
These  words  betray  no  easy  acceptance  of  hardship  : 
they  have,  rather,  a  fiery  intensity ;  there  is  a  soul 
glowing  with  indignation  behind  them,  ready  on  the 
instant  to  break  into  a  blaze  of  speech.  Again  and 
again  the  sense  of  wrong,  the  never-ceasing  heart- 
ache, bursts  through  the  self-restraint  of  that  strong 
nature. 

"...  How  salt  a  savour  hath 
The  bread  of  others,  and  how  hard  a  path 
To  climb  and  to  descend  the  stranger's  stairs  ! " 

Never  were  the  loneliness  and  hardness  of  the 
world  to  the  banished  more  deeply  written  than  in 
these  lines ;  never  was  his  home -sickness  more 
vividly  suggested  than  in  another  familiar  passage : 
"  I  have  pity  for  those,  whosoever  they  are,  that  lan- 
guish in  exile,  and  revisit  their  country  only  in 
dreams."  That  which  gives  experience  its  signifi- 
cance is  depth  of  feeling,  the  sensitiveness  of  nature 
which  receives  the  deepest  imprint  of  events.  In 
this  capacity  for  getting  the  very  last  anguish  out  of 
any  kind  of  pain,  Dante  was  pre-eminent ;  his  nature 
was  as  sensitive  as  it  was  passionate ;  the  intensity 
which  was  his  strength  as  a  poet  was  his  misery  as  a 
man.  Among  all  those  who  have  wandered  heartsick 
and  longing  for  death,  his  is  the  figure  which  in- 
stantly stands  before  us  whenever  the  word  "  exile  " 
is  spoken. 


SOME   MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.     185 

His  reaction,  therefore,  from  outward  misfortune  to 
inward  power  is  the  more  notable.  He  escaped  out 
of  the  mesh  which  the  sense  of  injustice  and  the 
bitterness  of  poverty  always  spread  for  the  lofty  spirit 
into  one  of  the  great  principles  of  art.  So  close,  so 
absorbing,  so  continuous  was  the  immediate  contact 
of  his  heart  with  the  most  piercing  and  painful  facts 
of  life,  that  his  work,  enriched  as  it  is  with  world-wide 
knowledge,  rests  as  directly  and  inevitably  upon  life 
as  the  mountains  rest  on  the  sustaining  mass  of  the 
globe.  Through  two  parts  of  the  "  Divine  Comedy" 
the  pain  of  existence,  that  mysterious  birth-pang  which 
every  human  soul  carries  to  the  grave,  never  leaves 
us.  When  Goethe,  a  student  at  Strasbourg,  read 
for  the  first  time,  and  in  a  tumult  of  soul,  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare,  he  said  that  he  felt  as  if  he  had  been 
looking  into  the  book  of  Fate,  with  the  hurricane  of 
life  tossing  its  leaves  to  and  fro.  In  the  "  Inferno  " 
and  the  "  Purgatorio  "  that  appalling  wind  beats  upon 
us  at  every  turn;  there  are  times  when  we  shield 
ourselves  from  it,  as  Dante  covered  his  face  from  the 
scorching  flames  that  played  about  him.  Never  was 
such  intensity  put  into  any  book  before ;  never,  per- 
haps, will  such  intensity  burn  on  any  later  page.  The 
book  had  made  him  lean  for  many  a  year,  because  it 
was  made  of  his  own  substance.  No  book  ever  swept 
a  wider  field  of  thought,  or  imbedded  itself  more 
completely  in  historical  incident  and  character ;  and 
yet  no  book  ever  issued  more  directly  out  of  the  life 
of  its  writer.    There  lies  one  secret  of  its  power,  of  its 


1 86       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

limitless  correspondence  with  life ;  there  lies  the  great 
principle  of  art  into  mastery  of  which  Dante  was 
driven  by  his  very  misery.  Phillips  Brooks  somewhere 
says  that  the  only  way  to  flee  away  from  God  is  to 
flee  into  him  :  Dante  was  driven  by  his  anguish  into 
the  very  heart  of  art.  Everything  else  fell  from  him  ; 
there  remained  only  this  last  refuge.  If  he  had  been 
less  great  in  vision  and  in  labour,  he  would  have  missed 
the  sublime  consolation  of  making  his  own  sorrows 
the  key  to  the  anguish  of  the  world,  —  of  discerning  in 
his  own  tumultuous  experience  the  record  of  all  human 
life.  To  a  pure  man  there  was  no  other  key  to  Hell. 
Dante  makes  it  clear  to  us  that  the  great  man  and 
the  great  artist  are  identical :  the  artist  is  the  man, 
not  one  form  of  his  activity,  one  side  of  his  nature. 
A  work  of  talent  is  a  thing  of  skill,  and  may  be 
divorced  from  experience,  from  character ;  but  a  work 
of  genius  is  a  piece  of  the  man's  self.  There  may  be 
incalculable  toil  upon  it,  flawless  workmanship  may 
disclose  itself  in  every  detail;  but  the  motive,  the 
conception,  the  informing  idea,  are  out  of  the  man's 
soul.  He  does  not  fashion  them ;  he  is  powerless 
to  invent  them ;  they  grow  within  him ;  they  are  the 
children  of  his  experience.  It  is  as  impossible  to 
separate  the  "Divine  Comedy"  from  Dante  as  to 
separate  the  fruit  from  the  tree  which  bore  it.  It  is 
so  distinct  that  it  may  be  plucked  and  yet  remain 
entire,  so  different  that  it  becomes  nourishment  for 
other  and  alien  life,  but  it  is  of  the  very  substance  of 
the  tree.    Dante's  poem  has  a  significance  as  wide  and 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      1 87 

deep  as  any  that  has  been  written ;  but  its  universality 
comes  of  the  very  concentration  of  experience  out  of 
which  it  issued.  All  the  rays  of  thought  were  focused 
and  burned  into  his  very  soul  before  they  issued  in 
art.  What  we  call  experience  is  the  personal  test  of 
life,  —  the  personal  contact  with  it ;  it  involves  the 
kind  of  knowledge  which  a  man  possesses  when  he 
is  able  to  say,  "  I  saw  it,  I  touched  it,  I  felt  it."  This 
is  that  first-hand  knowledge  out  of  which  all  the 
sciences  have  grown;  stage  by  stage,  art  has  ex- 
panded out  of  it ;  step  by  step,  the  earth  has  been 
discovered  and  mastered  by  it ;  above  all,  it  has  been 
the  road  through  which  those  supreme  and  final  truths 
which  we  call  religious  have  come  into  the  world. 
They  are  not  its  products ;  but  through  it,  as  through 
an  open  door,  they  have  come  to  succour  and  inspire. 
It  is  a  fact  of  the  deepest  significance  that  the  Bible, 
instead  of  giving  us  an  orderly,  logical  system  of  truth, 
gives  us  largely  history  so  interpreted  that  it  illustrates 
and  reveals  truth.  When  principles  are  stated  ab- 
stractly, it  is  always  to  meet  some  pressing  need,  some 
peculiar  condition  or  stage  of  development.  One 
aspect  is  presented  to  the  Hebrew,  another  to  the 
Greek,  and  still  another  to  the  Roman.  God  speaks 
on  human  occasion ;  the  prophetic  mood  is  evoked  by 
historic  necessity;  Christ  addresses  himself  to  the 
immediate  group,  to  the  incident  or  event  of  the 
hour;  he  uses  invariably  the  nearest  illustration. 
It  is  through  these  lowly  doors  that  he  passes  into 
the  region  of  universal  truth.     The  Bible  is,  there- 


1 88      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

fore,  the  supreme  book  of  experience ;  it  shows  the 
divine  brooding  over  the  human  and  shining  into  it, 
wherever  and  whenever  the  two  come  in  coritact ;  and 
these  points  of  contact  constitute  experience.  This 
is  the  method  of  all  the  great  teachers ;  not  by  ab- 
straction, but  by  realization,  is  truth  appropriated  and 
made  a  part  of  human  life. 

Capacity  for  experience  is  one  of  the  measures  of 
greatness.  If  this  line  were  run  through  literature,  it 
would  separate  all  writers  of  the  truest  insight  from 
those  who  charm  us  by  some  other  and  secondary 
gift.  The  experiencing  man  steadily  widens  and 
deepens  with  the  unfolding  of  his  life  history ;  every 
event  means  for  him  a  fresh  glimpse  of  truth ;  every 
full  hour  of  emotion  or  work,  a  ripening  of  the  spirit. 
It  is  profoundly  interesting  to  follow  the  steady 
growth  of  such  a  nature  as  Shakespeare's,  not  so  much 
by  processes  of  thought  as  by  processes  of  life.  For 
the  most  part  unconsciously  to  himself,  life  distils  its 
meaning  into  his  soul  through  the  silent  but  ceaseless 
opening  and  expansion  of  his  mind  and  heart.  Sen- 
sitive to  every  touch  of  the  outward  world,  responsive 
to  every  appeal  through  the  senses,  alive  to  every 
suggestion  to  the  spirit,  intent  not  to  shun  but  to 
share  the  full  movement  of  life,  —  such  a  nature  pre- 
sents an  ever-widening  contact  with  the  whole  of 
things,  and  gains  an  ever-deepening  insight  into 
their  meaning.  A  man  like  Macaulay,  on  the  other 
hand,  whom  Bagehot  rightly  describes  as  a  non-ex- 
periencing nature,  may  have  many  gifts,  but  has  no 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      1 89 

true  insight.  He  may  portray  with  striking  vividness 
the  thing  that  has  taken  place,  but  he  does  not  see 
or  feel  the  soul  of  it ;  he  may  add  constantly  to  his 
store  of  information,  but  he  does  not  grow  rich  in 
that  wisdom  to  which  the  secret  of  life  is  an  open 
secret. 

The  great  artists  often  come  slowly  and  painfully  to 
the  consciousness  of  their  work  and  their  power ;  but 
these  things  once  discovered,  the  channels  that  feed 
them  are  always  deepening  and  widening.  Shakespeare 
might  have  made  good  use  of  the  repose  and  leisure  of 
Oxford ;  but  he  was  independent  of  special  instruction, 
because  he  was  so  apt  a  pupil  in  that  greater  university 
framed  for  the  training  of  souls  like  his.  He 
began  with  the  fresh  and  buoyant  delight  of  the 
senses ;  he  read  with  such  intelligence  as  no  historian 
has  ever  possessed  the  long  and  stormy  story  of  his 
race;  he  brooded  over  those  questions  that  are  a 
haunting  pain  to  the  finest  souls;  he  came  at  last, 
in  his  serene  maturity,  to  a  rare  and  beautiful  poise 
of  nature,  —  senses,  mind,  and  soul  had,  each  in  turn, 
received  the  direct  imprint  of  life,  and  out  of  that 
education  came  the  vision  which  discerned  and  the 
faculty  which  fashioned  the  world  of  the  "  Tempest." 
First  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  then  "  Henry  V.,"  then 
"  Hamlet,"  then  the  "  Tempest ;  "  so  runs  the  story  of 
a  soul  nourished  upon  life,  and  making  every  separate 
stage  of  its  growth  in  the  order  of  nature  bear  a 
richer  and  deeper  harvest  of  art.  Not  so  wide,  so 
many-sided,  but  deeper  even  than  Shakespeare's  con- 


19°      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

tact  with  life  through  experience  was  Dante's.  Shake- 
speare suffered,  as  every  great  mind  must,  in  this 
long  travail  which  we  call  life ;  but  he  was  not  cut  and 
stung  by  personal  injustice ;  he  had  the  ease  which 
material  prosperity  brought  with  it.  Dante  bore  the 
long  bitterness  of  poverty.  The  only  refuge  for  a 
soul  so  beset  was  to  search  life  to  its  very  depths. 
If  pain  is  to  be  one's  lot,  then  feel  it  most  keenly 
that  one  may  find  the  very  heart  of  it,  —  that  was  the 
attitude  of  Dante.  No  man  suffers  from  choice ;  but 
since  suffering  must  come,  the  great  nature  will  drain 
it  of  whatever  moral  vigour  and  spiritual  insight  it 
may  impart. 

Dante  did  more  than  this  ;  he  gained  its  indirect  as 
well  as  its  direct  enrichment ;  he  made  it  contribute 
to  the  beauty  of  his  work.  There  are,  it  is  true,  arid 
passages  in  the  "  Divine  Comedy ; "  but  when  one 
remembers  what  material  is  wrought  into  it,  how  vast 
its  scope  is,  and  how  elaborate  its  scheme  or  ground- 
work, it  is  amazing  that  the  current  moves  so  rapidly, 
and  that  the  pauses  of  artistic  progression  are  so  few. 
The  whole  poem  is  inspired  with  clear,  coherent 
purpose ;  it  flows  together ;  it  unfolds  by  virtue  of 
an  interior  force  which  plays  freely  and  masterfully 
through  every  part  of  it,  and  gives  it  unity  of  struc- 
ture and  of  beauty  no  less  than  unity  of  idea.  To 
achieve  this  supreme  effect  of  art,  this  fusion  of  ma- 
terials, this  perfection  of  form,  a  supreme  effort  of 
the  whole  nature  is  demanded  :  this  kind  cometh  not 
save  by  prayer  and  fasting.    The  steady  concentra- 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      191 

tion   of  mind  involved  in  such  a  work  is  a  moral 
achievement  of  the  highest  order ;  the  patient  brood- 
ing over  the  theme,  tracing  its  relations  through  wide 
fields  of  knowledge  and  history,  detecting  its  analogies 
and  illustrations  in  the  sequence  of  human  and  nat- 
ural fact  and  law,  is  an  intellectual  achievement  possi- 
ble only  to  the  greatest  minds.   Art  is  mastered  not  by 
the  violent,  but  by  the  self-sacrificing,  the  patient,  and 
the  enduring.   It  does  not  respond  to  half-hearted  de- 
votion ;  it  is  won  by  no  intermittent  service ;  it  tolerates 
no  compromise  with  pleasure,  with  conventions,  with 
other  and  alien  aims  and  occupations.     The  painter 
who  is  half-artist  and  half-courtier  secures  his   easy 
popularity,  his  quick  returns,  his  social  successes,  his 
luxury ;  but  amid  all  the  applauding  voices  that  reach 
him  he  listens  in  vain  for  the  incorruptible  voice  of 
fame.     To  Michael  Angelo,  silent  and  solitary  on  his 
lonely  scaffolding,  sternly  intent  upon  his  task,  sternly 
indifferent  to  the  praise  of  the  palace  or  the  cheer  of 
the  square,    that  voice   came  clear   and   sustaining. 
Many  wait  for  the  sound  of  that  voice  ;  but  it  is  heard 
by  those  only  who  shut  their  souls  against  all  other 
and  lesser  voices.     Dante  heard  that  voice.     Sounds 
that  mingle  with  most  lives,  sounds  sweet  with  the 
long  usage  of  affection,  and  dear  to  the  heart  that 
leans  on  familiar  things,  were  denied  him ;  but  he  had 
for  consolation  and  companionship  this  voice  borne 
in  from  the  unborn  times  and  the  unborn  men.    There 
was  a  singleness  of  aim  in  him,  matched  with  a  sus- 
tained devotion,  which  gathered  all  the  forces  of  his 


192        ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

nature  in  one  continuous  and  absorbing  task.  Shut 
off  from  complicated  relations  with  his  time,  excluded 
from  the  privileges  and  cares  of  citizenship,  practi- 
cally without  family  ties,  he  poured  the  undivided 
stream  of  his  power  and  activity  into  a  single  channel. 
It  was  not  his  mind  alone  which  was  engaged  in  his 
work ;  it  was  not  heart  alone ;  it  was  not  his  technical 
skill  and  the  energy  of  his  nature :  in  the  blending 
of  all  these  qualities  is  found  the  secret  of  that  in- 
tensity which  gives  the  "  Divine  Comedy "  unity  of 
feeling  through  all  its  vast  movement.  Ballads  and 
lyrics  often  breathe  a  single  fiery  emotion ;  but  there 
is  no  other  poem  of  equal  magnitude  which  glows 
with  such  sustained  heat  of  soul. 

A  work  of  art  is  great  in  the  exact  measure  in  which 
it  absorbs  and  receives  the  life  of  the  artist,  —  in  the 
measure  in  which  it  springs,  as  Goethe  would  say, 
from  the  union  of  all  his  faculties.  It  may  be  strong, 
original,  suggestive,  if  it  come  primarily  from  his  mind ; 
it  may  be  moving,  inspiring,  impressive,  if  it  flow 
from  his  heart  alone  ;  it  may  be  clear,  effective,  beauti- 
ful, if  it  be  the  product  of  his  skill  or  training ;  but  it 
is  great,  deep,  and  enduring  in  the  measure  in  which 
all  these  faculties  and  forces  contribute  to  and  are 
mingled  in  it.  It  is  this  fusion  of  his  whole  nature 
which  gives  Dante's  work  not  only  unity,  but  such 
range  and  variety.  He  had  the  equipment  of  a 
thinker  of  the  first  order ;  and  if  his  mind  had  been 
primarily  engaged  in  his  work,  he  would  have  added 
another  to  the  massive  folios  and  quartos  of  the  school- 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      1 93 

man ;  there  is  a  whole  system  of  philosophy  in  the 
"  Divine  Comedy."  He  had  the  quick  imagination, 
the  glowing  feeling,  of  the  lyrical  poet ;  if  his  heart 
had  been  primarily  engaged  in  his  work,  we  should 
have  had  another  poet  of  pure  song ;  that  vision  of 
the  fated  lovers  floating  over  the  blackness  of  Hell 
remains  the  matchless  revelation  of  a  heart  that  knew 
all  the  tenderness  and  bitterness  of  love.  He  had 
the  constructive  genius,  the  ripe  culture,  the  technical 
training,  which  make  an  artist  by  instinct  and  neces- 
sity ;  if  his  skill  had  been  the  chief  quality  in  his 
work,  we  should  have  had  more  art  for  art's  sake. 
We  have  the  "Divine  Comedy"  because  none  of 
these  separate  faculties  took  the  lead  :  they  flowed  to- 
gether ;  the  whole  man  was  involved  and  expressed 
in  the  work. 

In  the  very  nature  of  Dante's  undertaking  lay  an 
all  but  insurmountable  task ;  it  was  so  large  in  scheme, 
it  involved  so  much  knowledge,  it  demanded  such 
elaboration,  such  proportion,  such  adjustment.  The 
Homeric  poems  had  the  great  aid  of  successive  epi- 
sodes and  incidents,  even  when  continuous  narrative 
failed  them ;  the  Greek  tragedies  had  in  each  case  a 
living  germ  of  myth  or  history;  the  "  Epic  of  Kings," 
the  "  Kalevala,"  the  "  Nibelungen  Lied,"  ran  close 
to  legend  or  tradition.  Shakespeare's  power  shows 
no  sign  of  limitation ;  but  the  plays,  while  they  bring 
the  whole  movement  of  life  within  the  vision  of  the 
imagination,  are  for  a  narrow  stage  and  for  a  brief 
three  hours.  There  were  pauses  of  rest  between  the 
13 


194      ESSAYS  IN  LITERACY  INTERPRETATION. 

writing  of  them :  the  theme  changed ;  the  mind  ad- 
dressed itself  to  new  problems ;  there  was  vast  varia- 
tion of  material  and  of  treatment,  —  as,  for  instance, 
between  "Lear"  and  "Antony  and  Cleopatra." 
But  Dante  had  no  such  aids  from  legend  or  history, 
from  myth  or  story,  from  change  and  variety  of 
work.  No  man  ever  owed  more  to  history  than  he ; 
but  history  did  not  aid  him  with  narrative  ease  and 
flow :  his  theme  shifted  the  stage  of  its  unfolding ; 
but  it  is,  after  all,  the  same  theme  in  Hell,  in  Purga- 
tory, and  in  Paradise.  All  things  considered,  the 
"  Divine  Comedy  "  is  the  most  tremendous  task  ever 
undertaken  by  a  poet,  — a  task  demanding  not  greater 
genius,  perhaps,  than  some  other  tasks,  but  greater 
fixity  of  attention,  more  prolonged  and  continuous 
absorption,  more  stern  and  resolute  severance  from 
affairs.  Dante's  success  was  conditioned  upon  long 
detachment,  upon  unbroken  absorption,  upon  the 
concentration  and  fusion  of  his  whole  nature.  His 
success  has,  therefore,  a  moral  and  intellectual  signifi- 
cance practically  unique  in  literature.  He  illustrates 
in  himself  the  laws  of  success  as  impressively  and  as  , 
authoritatively  as  his  work  discloses  the  standards 
and  aims  of  art.  To  possess  Dante's  genius  is  not 
enough ;  one  must  possess  also  Dante's  power  of 
sacrifice  and  fervour  of  consecration.  To  write  the 
"  Divine  Comedy,"  one  must  not  only  live  for  art,  but, 
in  a  very  true  sense,  die  for  it.  A  large  part  of  the 
poet's  happiness  and  all  his  ease  and  comfort,  the 
things  that  in  a  way  console  the  body  for  the  sorrows 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      1 95 

of  the  spirit,  —  were  lost  in  the  doing  of  that  sublime 
work.  There  were  great  inspirations,  and  consola- 
tions by  the  way ;  but  let  no  man  count  the  sacrifice 
less  because  the  work  to  which  it  contributed  is  so 
noble.  To  underestimate  the  suffering  of  the  heart 
is  to  lessen  the  significance  of  the  achievement  and 
rob  it  of  its  supreme  dignity.  The  law  which  wrought 
such  havoc  with  Dante's  personal  happiness  has  con- 
stant illustration  in  every  field  of  endeavour ;  but  men 
are  slow  to  learn  and  quick  to  forget  it.  It  is  part 
of  the  open  secret  which  so  many  fail  to  read,  though 
it  lies  written  over  all  tasks  and  careers.  Whosoever 
would  find  his  life  must  lose  it,  whosoever  would  keep 
must  spend,  whosoever  would  achieve  must  fail ;  sub- 
blime  paradox  of  the  human  life  in  which  the  divine 
is  always  mingling  and  striving  for  the  mastery  ! 

Dante  may  well  stand  as  the  typical  artist  in  the 
completeness  of  his  surrender  to  his  art ;  he  poured 
out  his  life  as  a  libation  to  the  Muse  of  poetry,  —  that 
beautiful  mistress  of  the  imagination,  radiant  with  im- 
perishable charms,  possessed  of  such  glorious  rewards, 
and  yet  so  inexorable  in  her  demand  for  devotion  ! 
The  men  who  have  risen  to  the  height  of  this  con- 
secration have,  through  this  very  surrender,  made 
themselves  masters  of  life  and  its  arts  of  expression, 
^schylus  sustained  this  test,  and  the  older  Greece  lives 
in  his  work ;  Shakespeare  was  equal  to  this  demand, 
and  left  us  what  have  well  been  called  the  most 
authentic  documents  of  human  history;  Goethe,  in 
his  way,  rose  to  this  exalted  plane  of  sustained  en- 


196      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

deavour,  and  the  modern  world  was  foreshadowed  in 
his  prose  and  verse.  Byron,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
his  unsurpassed  gift  of  lyric  expression,  failed  of  this 
supreme  surrender,  and  failed  also  of  the  complete 
expression  of  his  genius.  Of  how  many  richly  endowed 
poets  must  the  same  record  be  made  !  They  pos- 
sessed all  the  materials  for  work  of  the  highest 
quality,  of  the  greatest  magnitude ;  they  wrought  at 
times  with  a  fidelity  that  made  the  occasional  mo- 
ments what  the  years  ought  to  have  been :  but  lack- 
ing the  power  of  sustained  endeavour  born  of  the 
union  of  spiritual  integrity  with  intellectual  force, 
they  missed  that  putting  forth  of  the  whole  nature  in 
unbroken  continuity  which  is  the  inexorable  law  of 
supreme  achievement.  In  art,  which  in  its  deepest 
aspects  is  but  another  name  for  religion,  a  man  can- 
not serve  two  masters.  He  who  sets  himself  to  the 
task  of  interpreting  life  on  any  great  scale  must  put  the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  Devil  behind  him  as  resolutely 
as  ever  anchorite  shut  the  door  of  his  cell  in  the  face 
of  these  tempters  from  the  perfect  way.  It  is  idle  to 
talk  of  a  disseverance  between  great  art  and  funda- 
mental morals :  they  are  not  bound  together  by  ex- 
ternal law;  they  are  as  soil  and  fruit,  as  sun  and 
light,  as  truth  and  beauty.  A  sound  nature,  a  mind 
moving  inevitably  to  appointed  ends,  a  whole  man,  — 
these  are  the  only  sources  of  the  work  which  sustains 
comparison  with  the  soundness  and  inevitableness  of 
Nature.  The  swallow-flights  of  song,  touching  things 
near  and  familiar,  have  their  truth  and  their  sweet- 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      197 

ness ;  but  it  is  the  enduring  strength  of  the  eagle's 
wing  that  holds  a  steady  way  between  the  light  and 
the  world  which  it  searches  and  reveals.  Durante 
Alighieri,  the  poet's  baptismal  name,  —  the  "  endur- 
ing one,"  and  the  "  wing-bearer,"  —  reveals  the  secret 
of  this  masterful  soul. 

Probably  no  poem  was  ever  more  thoroughly  thought 
out,  so  far  as  its  general  plan,  the  relation  of  its  parts, 
and  the  blending  of  its  different  but  harmonious  ends 
were  concerned,  than  the  "  Divine  Comedy."  In  large 
design  and  in  minute  detail,  it  is  characterized  by 
marvellous  definiteness.  Every  outline  is  distinct, 
every  personage  unerringly  described  ;  the  adjectives 
seem  often  welded  to  the  substantives;  nothing  is 
left  unfinished.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
his  journey,  Dante  seems  to  have  known  where  the 
next  step  would  take  him ;  and  yet,  in  spite  of  this 
extraordinary  grasp  and  clearness  of  intention,  the 
"  Divine  Comedy  "  owes  more  to  the  unconscious 
than  to  the  conscious  Dante,  —  more  to  the  poet's 
nature  than  to  his  mind.  The  poem  has  been  spoken 
of  as  a  task ;  and  when  one  studies  it  from  the  analyti- 
cal standpoint,  the  writing  of  it  is  seen  to  have  been 
one  of  the  greatest  tasks  ever  undertaken.  There  is 
another  point  of  view,  however,  from  which  this  mas- 
sive work  loses  the  elements  of  a  task,  and  takes  on 
the  aspects  of  play.  There  are  in  it  the  ease,  the  free- 
dom, the  fulness,  of  a  great  nature  dealing  with  life  as 
a  master,  not  as  a  servant,  and  creating  not  arduously, 
but  from  an  inward  pressure.    The  "  Divine  Comedy  " 


198      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

was  not  made ;  it  grew.  There  was  a  vital  process 
behind  it.  There  were  all  the  stages  of  growth  in  its 
production  from  the  moment  when  the  seed  began  to 
germinate  in  the  soil  to  that  hour  —  the  purest,  di- 
vinest  that  art  has  ever  known  —  when  it  bore  the 
white  rose  in  Paradise.  It  was  not  the  tremendous 
effort  of  a  mind  strained  to  the  last  point  of  endur- 
ance ;  it  was  the  overflow  of  a  nature  through  which 
the  tidal  influences  and  forces  of  life  flowed  deep  and 
strong.  To  borrow  Ruskin's  thought,  it  is  not  a  great 
effort,  but  a  great  force,  which  we  feel  in  the  "  Divine 
Comedy."  A  thing  of  skill,  contrivance,  mechanism, 
is  detached  from  its  maker  and  its  surroundings ;  a 
thing  of  life  is  rooted  in  the  soil  where  it  grows.  Be- 
hind every  flower  there  are  the  earth  and  the  heavens, 
and  the  most  secluded  violet  involves  them  both ;  it 
could  not  have  been  without  their  combined  ministry 
to  its  fragile  life.  Behind  Westminster  Abbey  there 
were  not  only  stone  quarries  and  tools,  there  were 
religion,  art,  history,  fathomless  depths  of  faith  and 
service.  Behind  the  "  Divine  Comedy "  there  is 
more  than  Dante  was  conscious  of,  clear  as  his  in- 
tention was  and  definite  as  was  his  plan.  It  was  a 
beautiful  fancy  of  the  Greeks  that  the  gods  were  some- 
times surprised  in  their  solitude,  —  Diana  at  her  bath, 
and  Pan  on  the  road  to  Sparta;  but  it  was  only  a 
fancy.  The  imagination  —  that  larger  and  deeper 
insight  —  knows  that  divinity  cannot  be  seen  by  eyes 
that  depend  for  their  seeing  upon  a  waxing  and  wan- 
ing light ;  it  is  the  inward  and  constant  light  that 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      199 

shines  upon  God,  and  we  see  him  and  still  live.  Not 
only  are  we  hidden  from  each  other,  but  we  are  hid- 
den from  ourselves ;  that  is  our  sacredness.  We 
are  fed  by  unseen  springs  through  invisible  channels. 
We  are  as  conscious  at  times  of  the  advance  and  re- 
cession of  tides  of  power  as  we  are  of  the  incom- 
ing and  outgoing  of  the  ocean  currents.  There  are 
depths  in  us  which  we  cannot  sound ;  race  instincts 
which  ally  us  with  the  remotest  past  j  ancient  associa- 
tions with  forest  and  sea  which  survive  the  memory  of 
their  origin ;  affinities  with  Nature  which  keep  us  in 
touch  with  a  world  of  force  and  beauty  which  we 
never  fully  comprehend,  but  with  which  we  have  a 
mysterious  intimacy.  All  history  seems  to  echo  and 
reverberate  within  us ;  its  oldest  stories  are  strangely 
familiar.  More  wonderful  even  than  this  complexity 
and  vitality  of  natural  and  human  association  and  in- 
fluence are  the  contacts  between  our  souls  and  the 
Soul  of  the  universe. 

Now,  the  greater  a  nature,  the  wider  its  sweep  of 
these  unrecorded  experiences,  the  deeper  its  rootage 
in  this  mysterious  soil  of  history,  race,  nature,  divinity. 
When  such  a  nature  produces  in  the  field  of  art,  that 
which  grows  out  of  it  will  gather  up  and  reproduce  a 
vitality  far  greater  and  more  significant  than  the  artist 
standing  alone  could  contribute  to  it.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  a  few  men  are  recognized  as  speaking  for 
their  races  ;  a  whole  section  of  life,  a  long  movement 
of  history,  seem  to  bear  in  them  the  flower  of  expres- 
sion.    These  men  produce  out  of  their  unconscious- 


200      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

ness  far  more  than  out  of  their  consciousness  ;  they  see 
clearly  enough  the  point  to  which  they  would  go ;  but 
while  we  journey  with  them  the  earth  and  the  heavens 
are  unrolled  before  us ;  the  road  along  which  we  pass 
is  but  a  faintly  marked  line  across  unexplored  conti- 
nents. Dante  has  very  definite  things  to  say ;  but  his 
deepest  message  is  to  the  imagination,  and  is  there- 
fore unspoken.  His  song  is  "  unfathomable,"  as  Tieck 
long  ago  called  it,  because  all  life  flows  under  it. 
Here,  again,  we  come  upon  his  prophetic  quality,  — 
his  foreshadowing  of  the  attitude  and  method  of  the 
true  artist  in  all  times.  That  which  the  artist  gives  us 
is  himself.  His  genius  is  not  his ;  it  belongs  to  the 
world,  because  the  world  has  contributed  the  mate- 
rial with  which  it  deals.  No  man  ever  owed  more 
to  his  fellows  than  Dante.  Shakespeare  borrowed 
stories  from  all  quarters ;  Dante  borrowed  all  history. 
The  "Divine  Comedy"  is  embedded  in  history;  its 
background  is  the  entire  historic  movement.  It  was 
Dante's  greatness  that  his  life  had  such  reach  and 
force,  —  that  it  gathered  into  itself  so  vast  a  range  of 
experience,  and  brought  to  light  so  wide  a  sweep  of 
action.  These  facts  of  history  had  long  sunk  below  the 
region  of  consciousness  in  him  ;  he  had  absorbed  the 
past  and  made  it  part  of  himself  before  he  expressed 
the  soul  of  it  in  poetry.  The  Middle  Ages  had,  for 
the  purposes  of  art,  this  priceless  quality  of  uncon- 
sciousness. Morbid  as  mediaeval  thought  often  was, 
distorted  as  its  imagination  was,  grotesque  as  its  mis- 
takes of  fact  often  were,  it  had  a  naivete  and  un- 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      201 

consciousness  which  we  sadly  and  fatally  lack.  The 
mediaeval  spirit  thought  much,  but  it  thought  pas- 
sionately, with  a  certain  fervour  and  intensity;  it 
thought  largely  by  the  aid  of  the  imagination.  It 
felt  more  than  it  thought ;  and  in  art  feeling  is  the 
essential  quality.  Thought  without  feeling  gives  us 
philosophy  or  science ;  thought  with  feeling  gives  us 
literature.  The  mediaeval  spirit  felt  deeply  and  in- 
stinctively, and  so,  without  consciousness  of  the  pro- 
cess, it  produced  a  vast  growth  of  popular  epics, 
songs,  and  stories ;  and  its  reverence  and  piety,  felt 
to  the  very  depths  of  its  nature,  were  set  in  pillar  and 
arch,  in  window  and  fretted  roof,  in  the  imperishable 
beauty  of  the  cathedral. 

Dante  was  the  first  great  literary  nature  touched  by 
these  hidden  streams  of  faith  and  beauty.  He  not 
only  shared  in  them,  but  by  so  much  as  he  was  greater 
than  his  contemporaries  he  was  fed  by  them.  He 
was  one  of  the  deepest  and  clearest  of  the  mediaeval 
thinkers ;  but  he  felt  more  profoundly  than  he  thought. 
Thought,  knowledge,  fact,  were  never  cold  to  him ; 
they  seemed  to  burn  their  way  into  his  mind ;  they 
sank  through  his  mind  into  his  heart.  It  was  one  of 
the  superstitions  of  the  time  that  cities  were  some- 
times sunk  by  magicians  into  the  depths  of  pools ; 
and  the  peasant  passing  by  at  dusk  peered  trembling 
and  awestruck  into  the  still  waters,  and  saw  there  the  lost 
town  swallowed  up  in  death  and  silence,  —  the  streets 
empty  that  had  once  been  thronged ;  the  bells  silent 
that  had  once  swung  with  resonant  melody ;  the  houses 


202      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

deserted  that  had  once  had  cheer  and  mirth  of  life. 
So  in  Dante  that  old  world  survives,  and  we  read  it 
to  the  very  heart.  It  is  not  until  thought,  knowledge, 
and  fact  pass  beyond  the  mind  into  the  keeping  of 
the  heart,  where  feeling  plays  upon  them  and  divines 
their  spiritual  meanings,  that  art  finds  them  ripe  for 
use.  The  first  perceptions  of  unsuspected  beauty  in 
things  is  always  accompanied  by  agitation.  The  very 
essence  of  literature  is  this  sensitiveness  of  perception, 
this  freshness  of  feeling,  which  clothes  familiar  facts 
and  obvious  truths  with  a  loveliness  or  majesty  un- 
dreamed of  by  the  thought  alone.  It  is  through  the 
insight  and  play  of  the  imagination  that  the  historic 
fact  yields  its  inner  and  spiritual  meaning ;  and  there 
must  be  a  brooding  of  the  whole  nature  over  the  fact 
before  it  ripens  into  art.  While  questions  are  still 
pressing  for  answer,  while  movements  still  absorb  the 
faculties  in  action,  while  problems  still  agitate  and  dis- 
turb, they  rarely  receive  literary  expression.  When 
the  struggle  is  over  and  the  movement  accomplished, 
the  Muse  of  Poetry  comes  to  claim  her  own.  The 
agony  of  strife  yields  to  the  quiet  meditation,  the 
mysterious  distillation  of  truth,  the  deep  and  sweet  dis- 
closure of  beauty.  Far  below  the  region  of  eager  and 
painful  thinking,  with  its  unrest  and  its  agitation,  the 
question,  the  problem,  the  great  issues,  sink  into  the 
rich,  profound,  unconscious  life  of  a  people  or  a  man. 
They  become  a  kind  of  background,  full  of  majesty, 
of  mystery,  of  suggestion  and  allurement  for  the 
imagination,  —  like    those    mountain- ranges   which 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      203 

guarded  the  youth  of  Titian,  and  in  the  long  years 
of  his  maturity  appeared  and  reappeared  in  his  works. 
For  this  reason  childhood  is  so  often  and  so  incompar- 
ably touched  by  the  great  writers.  It  lies  behind  them, 
a  real  landscape,  but  with  what  softness  of  outline,  what 
mysteries  of  light  and  atmosphere  ! 

Dante  came  when  this  light  lay  soft  on  the  "  ten 
silent  centuries,"  —  when  their  tasks  were  done  and 
their  service  complete ;  when  the  problems  that 
had  tormented  faithful  and  morbid  souls  alike  were 
settled ;  when  the  new  era  was  at  hand,  and  the  new 
world  was  rising  out  of  the  old.  Deep  in  the  heart 
and  memory  of  that  old  world  lay  the  records  and  ex- 
periences of  its  youth  and  its  prime ;  deep  in  Dante's 
heart  they  waited  for  the  discernment  of  his  deep  in- 
telligence, for  the  expression  of  his  unsurpassed  fac- 
ulty of  song.  He  carried  that  old  world  in  his  heart 
through  all  his  wanderings ;  he  brooded  over  it  until 
its  faith,  its  art,  its  history,  were  fused,  harmonized, 
and  completely  possessed.  When  the  "  Divine  Com- 
edy "  grew  under  his  hands,  this  ripe  and  rich  past, 
this  vast  and  fathomless  life,  to  which  races  and  cen- 
turies had  contributed,  rose  into  consciousness  once 
more,  —  rose  in  organic  unity  and  completeness,  with 
such  disclosure  of  far-reaching  spiritual  relations, 
of  immortal  significance  to  the  soul  of  man,  as  only 
a  poet  who  was  also  a  prophet  could  give  it.  It  was 
no  longer  an  abstract  faith,  an  arbitrary  knowledge,  a 
mass  of  unrelated  facts ;  it  was  the  allegory  of  the 
soul's  pilgrimage,  the  revelation  of  the  soul's  life. 


204      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

There  is  but  one  "  Divine  Comedy,"  —  one  poem  in 
which  depth  and  height  of  thought,  beauty  of  form, 
and  intensity  of  feeling  are  so  perfectly  combined. 
There  are  only  three  or  four  works  in  all  literature 
which  we  place  beside  this  poem.  It  has  less  breadth, 
less  range  of  sunny  fruitfulness,  than  the  work  of  Shake- 
speare and  of  Goethe ;  but  it  is  the  highest  altitude 
of  human  achievement.  It  is  one  of  the  great  satis- 
factions of  humanity,  because  it  realizes  the  noblest 
anticipations  of  life.  Here  was  a  man  who  lived  in 
the  heart  of  things,  who  thought  and  acted  as  if  he 
were  conscious  of  immortality;  who  could  afford  to 
let  one  phase  of  life  torment  and  disown  him,  be- 
cause he  had  all  life  for  compensation ;  who  lived  and 
wrought  like  a  master,  born  to  the  highest  intellectual 
and  spiritual  possessions,  and  not  to  be  despoiled  of 
them  by  any  chance  of  earthly  fortune.  All  men 
crave  such  living  and  performance  as  Dante's,  because 
they  adequately  express  the  energy  of  an  immortal 
spirit.  Scepticism,  cynicism,  pessimism,  have  their 
periods ;  the  race  has  its  bad  quarter  of  an  hour  now 
and  then ;  but  such  men  as  Dante  make  these  ignoble 
suspicions  of  divinity,  these  mean  doubts  about  our 
fellows,  these  weak  denials  of  our  own  natures, 
incredible.  One  righteous  man  demonstrates  the 
reality  of  goodness,  and  one  great  man  makes  all 
life  great.  Scepticism  is  the  root  of  all  evil  in  us  and 
in  our  arts.  We  do  not  believe  enough  in  God,  in 
ourselves,  and  in  the  divine  laws  under  which  we 
live.     Great  art  involves  great  faith,  —  a  clear,  reso- 


SOME  MODERN  READINGS  FROM  DANTE.      2 05 

lute,  victorious  insight  into  and  grasp  of  things;  a 
belief  real  enough  and  powerful  enough  to  inspire 
and  sustain  heroic  tasks.  The  open  secret  of  a  great 
and  noble  achievement  in  art  is  a  sound  and  noble 
nature  in  the  artist.  Dante  was  great  in  himself,  — 
not  faultless,  not  entirely  harmonious,  but  great  in 
faith,  in  force,  and  in  endeavour.  He  met  life  as  a 
strong  swimmer  meets  the  sea,  not  with  dismay  and 
outcries,  but  with  heroic  putting  forth  of  effort,  with 
calmness  and  steadiness  of  soul,  with  the  buoyancy  of 
a  great  strength  matching  itself  against  a  great  peril. 
He  believed  and  he  achieved,  —  that  is  the  true  story 
of  his  life. 


A  WORD   ABOUT   HUMOUR. 

The  difficulties  which  beset  the  endeavour  to  define 
vital  qualities  are  veiy  evident  in  the  results  of  the 
attempts,  dating  back  to  the  time  of  Aristotle,  to  draw 
sharp  lines  of  distinction  between  wit  and  humour. 
Literature  does  not  offer  the  record  of  a  more  delight- 
ful will-o'-the-wisp  pursuit.  These  pervasive  elements 
are  present  in  every  literature ;  but  they  have  a  Pro- 
tean variability  of  form,  and  they  sport  with  severe 
and  logical  thinkers  with  an  easy  indifference  to  for- 
mulas and  categories.  This  very  elusiveness  is  not 
only  a  very  great  charm,  but  furnishes  evidence  of  the 
important  part  which  wit  and  humour  play  in  human 
affairs.  They  are  omnipresent :  they  register  the  over- 
flow of  the  soul  in  art,  religion,  and  history ;  merri- 
ment and  sorrow,  friendship  and  animosity,  purity  and 
evil,  have  found  common  use  in  them.  No  qualities 
are  better  known,  or  more  readily  recognizable ;  but 
they  are  still  at  large.  They  will  never  be  caught  in 
any  snare  of  definition,  however  skilfully  set.  We 
shall  delight  in  their  manifestations,  use  them  as  part 
of  our  common  speech,  value  them  among  the  greater 
resources  of  life  ;  but  we  shall  never  define  them  as  we 
define  a  thing  fixed  and  stationary,  or  a  relation  the 
contacts  of  which  are  seen  on  all  sides.     Wit  is  too 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  207 

Protean,  humour  too  elemental,  for  complete  defini- 
tion. This  is  not  saying  that  deep  glimpses  into  the 
nature  of  these  qualities  are  lacking,  or  that  acute  and 
luminous  comments  on  the  differences  between  them 
have  not  been  made.  English  literature,  which  is  nota- 
bly rich  in  both  wit  and  humour,  is  also  rich  in  illus- 
tration and  characterization  of  these  qualities.  Hazlitt, 
Leigh  Hunt,  and  Thackeray  have  approved  themselves 
as  commentators  whose  joy  was  in  the  text  rather  than 
in  the  comment ;  while  of  the  large  company  of  Eng- 
lish and  American  essayists  and  critics  there  are  few 
who  have  not  made  some  contribution  to  a  clearer 
understanding  of  these  fugitive  things. 

Exact  definition  is  not,  however,  the  prerequisite  of 
deep  thinking,  or  of  a  really  profound  comprehension 
either  of  the  things  of  the  spirit  or  of  the  mind ;  if  it 
were,  we  should  be  cut  off  from  dealing  intelligently 
with  the  things  which  are  nearest  and  most  essential 
to  us.  The  deepest  things  in  our  lives  are  best  known 
and  least  definable.  As  soon  as  we  touch  them,  we 
slip  out  of  logic  into  poetry. 

Wit,  being  distinctively  an  intellectual  quality,  pre- 
sents sharper  outlines  than  humour ;  but  the  two  quali- 
ties so  often  appear  together  that,  at  the  first  glance, 
they  seem  to  be  interchangeable.  They  have,  indeed, 
this  characteristic  in  common  :  they  arise  out  of  the 
perception  of  some  kind  of  incongruity,  some  form 
of  contrast.  Wit  is  lighter,  drier,  more  distinctly 
localized,  more  purely  intellectual,  than  humour.;  and 
humour  is  more  elemental,  more  pervasive,  more  a 


208       ESSAYS  W  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

matter  of  character  and  temperament.  Wit  is  allied 
to  talent  in  its  cleverness,  dexterity,  and  a  certain  hard 
and  brilliant  quality  of  skill ;  while  humour  partakes 
of  the  wider  reach,  the  ampler  flow,  the  deep  uncon- 
sciousness of  genius.  Wit  is  the  swift  play,  the  flash- 
ing thrust  and  parry,  of  the  mind.  Humour  flows 
from  character ;  its  springs  are  in  a  man's  nature ;  it 
is  the  expression,  not  of  that  which  is  rapid,  dexterous, 
and  self-conscious,  but  of  that  which  is  fundamental 
and  unconscious  in  him.  Wit  is  a  thing  apart  from 
character ;  humour  is  the  most  unforced  expression  of 
character.  The  old  physicians  were  not  far  wrong  in 
making  humour  one  of  the  four  elements  out  of  which 
the  physical  body  is  compounded,  and  therefore  part 
of  the  very  substance  of  a  man.  This  original  use  of 
the  word  is  the  most  suggestive  comment  on  its  mean- 
ing ;  we  shall  not  go  astray  if  we  follow  its  lead.  It 
was  one  of  those  instinctive  guesses  which  fuller  knowl- 
edge has  verified  in  quite  unexpected  fashion.  Wit 
plays  on  the  surface  of  things ;  humour  streams  down 
into  the  heart  of  them,  irradiates  them,  and,  without 
intention,  gets  at  their  secret.  Wit  is  colourless,  emo- 
tionless ;  it  is  as  dry,  as  detached  from  the  things  it 
touches,  as  an  abstract  quality.  Humour,  being  the 
expression  of  the  whole  nature,  is  full  of  heart ;  it  has 
tenderness,  sympathy,  piety,  sadness;  the  laughter 
which  it  evokes  is  without  malice  or  bitterness ;  it  is 
often  so  near  to  tears  that  the  two  blend  as  naturally 
as  the  moods  of  an  April  sky. 

The  deepest  humour  is  never  cynical  or  destructive ; 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  209 

it  never  wounds.  The  wit  of  Voltaire  is  often  but  the 
mask  of  a  sneer,  and  the  wit  of  Heine  cuts  like  the 
surgeon's  blade ;  but  the  humour  of  Cervantes  is  full 
of  reverence  and  courtesy,  and  the  humour  of  Shake- 
speare of  human  tenderness  and  sadness. 

Dr.  Bushnell  brings  out  the  fundamental  quality 
of  each  when  he  says :  "  One  is  the  dry  labour  of 
intention  or  design,  ambition  eager  to  provoke  ap- 
plause, malignity  biting  at  an  adversary,  envy  letting 
down  the  good  or  the  exalted.  The  other,  humour, 
is  the  soul  reeking  with  its  own  moisture,  laughing  be- 
cause it  is  full  of  laughter,  —  as  ready  to  weep  as  to 
laugh ;  for  the  copious  shower  it  holds  is  good  for 
either.     And  then,  when  it  has  set  the  tree  a-dripping, 

'  And  hung  a  pearl  in  every  cowslip's  ear,' 

the  pure  sun  shining  after  will  reveal  no  colour  of 
intention  in  the  sparkling  drop,  but  will  leave  you 
doubting  still  whether  it  be  a  drop  let  fall  by  laughter 
or  a  tear."  Spontaneity  and  health  of  soul  are  the 
characteristics  of  humour.  Wit  may  be  spontaneous ; 
humour  must  be.  Wit  may  be  sound  and  sweet ; 
humour  must  be.  Wit  may  let  us  into  the  secret  of 
character;  humour  must  reveal  it. 

The  great  wits  form  a  sharply-defined  group  of  ver- 
satile and  gifted  persons,  not  so  often  read  as  quoted ; 
for  by  its  very  nature  wit  is  a  portable  rather  than  a 
diffusive  quality.  It  reveals  itself  in  sudden  flashes, 
not  in  a  continuous  glow  and  illumination.  It  is  dis- 
tilled in  sentences ;  it  is  preserved  in  figures,  illustra- 
14 


2IO      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

tions,  epigrams,  epithets,  phrases.  In  these  days  one 
reads  Voltaire  and  Sydney  Smith  for  "points,"  not 
for  broad  completeness  or  for  large  and  luminous  dis- 
closure of  the  nature  of  the  themes  with  which  they 
deal.  The  elder  Dumas  has  stamped  his  superscrip- 
tion on  a  few  pieces  of  the  pure  gold  of  wit,  which  : 
furnish  a  standard  coinage  among  the  most  critical 
and  fastidious.  Heine's  rare  poetic  insight  and 
unique  quality  are  too  often  undervalued  in  compari- 
son with  that  arrowy  wit, — never  barbed  with  bitter- 
ness, and  yet  always  left  stinging  in  the  victim  as  if 
dipped  in  the  very  essence  of  malice.  Wit  seems, 
upon  analysis,  a  conversational  quality,  called  out  by 
social  relations  and  influences,  and  expressed  briefly 
and  compactly,  with  the  incisiveness  of  epigram  and 
repartee.  It  is  the  sharpest  of  comments  ;  it  often 
brings  a  ray  of  most  intense  light  to  bear  on  a  defect, 
an  exaggeration,  a  falsehood  :  but  it  does  not  deal  with 
subjects  broadly  and  comprehensively ;  it  does  not  illu- 
minate wide  fields  of  thought  and  life ;  it  has  no  crea- 
tive quality ;  there  is  nothing  elemental  in  it.  It  is 
like  the  flash  of  lightning  during  the  brief  duration  of 
which  a  bit  of  landscape  stands  out  in  startling  dis- 
tinctness ;  it  has  none  of  the  wide,  fruitful,  reveal- 
ing quality  of  the  sunlight. 

The  great  humorists  present  a  significant  contrast 
to  the  great  wits;  for  while  the  wits  entertain  and 
dazzle  us,  the  humorists  reveal  life  to  us.  Aristopha- 
nes, Cervantes,  Moliere,  and  Shakespeare,  the  typi- 
cal humorists,  are  among  the  greatest  contributors  to 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  211 

the  capital  of  human  achievement.  They  give  us,  not 
glimpses,  but  views  of  life,  —  not  detached  comments, 
but  comprehensive  interpretations.  They  are  pre- 
eminently creative  ;  and  the  ease  and  breadth  of  their 
work  hint  at  the  elemental  quality  of  humour.  A 
humorist  of  the  first  order  has  always  great  range, 
and  moves  freely  through  an  almost  limitless  world  of 
thought  and  fancy.  In  his  most  destructive  moods, 
Aristophanes  gives  forth  such  an  impression  of  force 
and  compass  that  in  the  very  process  of  decomposing 
one  world,  he  seems  to  be  constructing  another.  Lu- 
cian  has  far  less  fertility  and  resource  of  imagination, 
less  buoyancy  and  splendour  of  poetic  fancy ;  but  he 
also  moves  at  ease  in  a  world  ampler  than  that  of 
his  contemporaries,  —  a  world  which  his  humour, 
even  when  destructive  of  the  old  faith,  broadens 
rather  than  destroys.  Rabelais,  in  the  broadest  spirit 
of  license,  makes  an  honest  fight  for  more  reality  and 
less  sham,  —  for  a  wider  and  freer  world.  Cervantes, 
Moliere,  and  Heine,  with  very  different  gifts,  and  from 
very  different  points  of  view,  share  this  quality  of 
overflowing  abundance  and  vitality.  There  is  no  con- 
sciousness of  strain  in  them,  —  no  evident  effort  to 
conform  to  certain  standards  and  to  meet  certain 
tests.  On  the  contrary,  they  move  in  an  atmosphere 
of  free  and  independent  expression ;  they  are  con- 
tinually breaking  through  the  imaginary  conventional 
limits  of  their  time,  and  breaking  into  a  larger  world. 
The  arid  and  ludicrous  formalism  of  the  chivalric 
habit  after  the  spirit   of  chivalry  has  fled ;   typical 


212      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

hypocrisies  and  specious  self-deceit;  the  stupidity 
and  dense  self-satisfaction  of  Philistinism,  —  all  these 
various  forms  of  narrowness  and  falsehood  are  limita- 
tions of  human  growth  and  free  activity ;  and  against 
these  limitations  the  humorists  break  their  lances. 
Heine  justly  claimed  for  himself  the  position  of  a 
liberator  of  humanity;  for  all  the  great  humorists 
are  liberators. 

It  is  true  that  Aristophanes,  Lucian,  and  Heine  are 
often  distinctly  destructive  in  mood,  and  seem  to  have 
no  other  purpose  but  to  make  current  beliefs  incredi- 
ble. Heine,  the  most  volatile  and  tricksy  spirit  in 
literature,  slips  into  blasphemy  with  magical  ease,  and 
is  never  so  far  from  seriousness  of  spirit  as  when  he 
puts  himself  most  completely  under  the  spell  of  senti- 
ment. "  Other  bards,"  says  a  writer  in  a  recent  issue 
of  the  "  Atheneum,"  "  have  passed  from  grave  to 
gay  within  the  compass  of  one  work ;  but  the  art  of 
constantly  showing  two  natures  within  the  small  limit 
of  perhaps  three  ballad  verses  was  reserved  for  Heine. 
No  one  like  him  understands  how  to  build  up  a  little 
edifice  of  the  tenderest  and  most  refined  sentiment  for 
the  mere  pleasure  of  knocking  it  down  with  a  last  line. 
No  one  like  him  approaches  his  reader  with  dole- 
ful countenance,  pours  into  the  ear  a  tale  of  secret 
sorrow,  and  when  the  sympathies  are  enlisted  sur- 
prises his  confidant  with  a  horse-laugh.  It  seems  as 
though  Nature  had  endowed  him  with  a  most  delicate 
sensibility  and  a  keen  perception  of  the  ridiculous, 
that  his  own  feelings  may  afford  him  a  perpetual  sub- 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  213 

ject  for  banter."  This  incessant  intermingling  of  the 
most  delicate  feeling  with  the  broadest  or  keenest 
satire  was,  of  course,  temperamental ;  no  one  has  ever 
passed  from  one  mood  to  the  other  so  swiftly  as  Heine. 
But  the  transition  is  characteristic  of  all  the  great 
humorists.  One  does  not  need  to  read  Heine  very 
thoroughly  to  discover  that  there  is  a  constant  strug- 
gle in  his  soul,  —  a  struggle  to  break  with  Hebraism, 
and  reconcile  himself  with  Hellenism.  He  revolts 
against  the  Hebrew  spirit,  because  it  seems  to  rob 
him  of  a  goodly  portion  of  life ;  to  recover  the  beauty 
and  harmony  which  seem  to  have  perished  with  the 
Greeks  is  at  once  the  endeavour  and  the  pang  of  his 
life.  It  is  this  consciousness  of  dissonance  which  in- 
spires the  spirit  of  mockery  in  him.  He  cannot  feel 
at  home  in  his  own  time  ;  it  limits  him,  hinders  him, 
binds  him ;  it  is,  in  his  feeling  at  least,  too  small  for 
him.  Consciously  or  unconsciously,  he  is  always  fight- 
ing against  limitations  and  striving  after  a  broader  life. 
This  is  the  deeper  significance  of  his  work,  as  it  is 
the  deepest  significance  of  humour. 

For  that  which  was  true  of  Heine  was  still  more 
true  of  Aristophanes,  —  the  most  audacious  of  all 
the  humorists.  It  was  Heine  himself  who  said  :  "  A 
deep  idea  of  world-destruction  lies  at  the  root  of 
every  Aristophanic  comedy,  and,  like  a  fantastically 
ironical  magic-tree,  springs  up  in  it  with  blooming 
ornaments  of  thought,  with  singing  nightingales,  and 
climbing,  chattering  apes  ;  "  and  he  speaks  elsewhere 
of  the  Aristophanic  "jubilee  of  death  and  fire-works  of 


2 1 4      ESS  A  YS  IN  LI  TERAR  Y  INTERPRE  TA  TION. 

annihilation."  The  sweep  of  Aristophanes's  imagina- 
tion, the  license  of  his  fancy,  the  depth  and  beauty 
of  his  thought,  the  lawless  audacity  of  his  satire, 
give  an  impression  of  fathomless  scepticism,  —  the 
searching  irony  of  a  god  looking  on  human  life  from 
the  standpoint  of  cynical  indifference.  He  handles 
his  materials  with  a  kind  of  Olympian  breadth  and 
ease,  —  more  like  a  god  creating  worlds  out  of  his 
own  surplusage  of  vitality  than  like  a  satirist.  It  is 
highly  improbable  that  he  was  the  deliberate  and  con- 
scious moralist  which  some  of  his  German  students 
and  critics  have  held  him  to  be  ;  but  the  vein  of  seri- 
ousness in  his  work  is  quite  as  evident  as  the  vein  of 
poetry ;  and  in  a  certain  swift  and  splendid  effective- 
ness, no  poet  has  ever  surpassed  him.  To  his  most 
careless  reader  he  conveys  a  sense  of  freedom,  an 
idea  of  breadth  and  vastness,  which  are  at  times  al- 
most overwhelming.  He  moves  in  the  creative  ele- 
ment ;  his  influence  plays  like  fire  upon  the  habits, 
beliefs,  and  vices  which  seemed  to  him  corrupt,  false, 
or  ridiculous.  His  work  was,  in  its  ultimate  effect, 
the  work  of  a  liberator. 

If  this  expansive  quality  of  humour,  this  liberat- 
ing force,  is  characteristic  of  the  destructive  humor- 
ists, it  is  still  more  notable  and  significant  in  the  con- 
structive humorists,  —  those  who,  like  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  Cervantes,  Richter,  and  Carlyle,  have  dealt 
with  life  with  broad  or  genial  earnestness  and  sin- 
cerity. The  study  of  both  schools  of  humour  brings 
out  clearly  the  very  significant  fact  that  humour  in- 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  215 

volves  the  background  of  a  greater  world  than  that 
in  which  the  humorists  sport.  Carlyle  says  of  Socrates 
that  he  was  "terribly  at  ease  in  Zion; "  he  handled 
life  and  its  deepest  concerns  with  an  ease  and  free- 
dom which  betray  a  consciousness  of  being  at  home 
amid  the  mysteries  of  existence  and,  in  a  way,  supe- 
rior to  them.  That  is  the  attitude  of  the  great 
humorist :  he  plays  with  life  in  the  sense  in  which 
play  implies  greater  range  and  freedom  than  work. 
For  while  work  involves  a  certain  subjection  of  the 
man  to  his  toil,  a  certain  submission  of  the  artisan  to 
the  task,  play  implies  ease,  freedom,  and  fulness. 
Play  is  the  spontaneous  overflow  of  a  great  force,  the 
natural  and  painless  putting  forth  of  strength,  the 
delight  and  fertility  of  the  artist  handling  his  mate- 
rial as  the  plastic  medium  of  his  thought. 

The  rigid  logician,  refusing  the  aid  of  insight  and 
rejecting  the  imagination  as  untrustworthy,  stands 
under  the  shadow  of  the  globe,  and  bends,  like  an 
over-laden  Atlas,  under  the  appalling  weight  of  the 
burden.  He  moves  within  fixed  limits,  along  pre- 
scribed paths,  —  often  with  passionate  eagerness  and 
intensity  of  spirit,  but  oblivious  of  all  sides  of  life 
save  the  one  upon  which  the  thought  is  fixed,  and  with 
the  air  of  one  passing  over  dangerous  territory  and 
dreading  solicitation  or  attack.  The  humorist,  on 
the  other  hand,  stands  aside  from  the  world,  and 
watches  its  movement  as  part  of  a  greater  order; 
studies  it  with  an  audacious  ease  and  equipoise ; 
judges  it  with  the  assurance  of  one  whose  vision  in- 


2l6      ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

eludes  the  whole  of  which  it  is  part.  He  feels  its 
suffering  and  recognizes  its  tragic  elements ;  but  in  his 
broad  conception  the  shadows  are  relieved  by  the 
lights,  and  the  gloom  of  the  parts  is  swallowed  up  in 
the  brightness  of  the  whole.  For  while  the  humorist 
is  often  a  pessimist  so  far  as  immediate  conditions 
are  concerned,  he  is  an  optimist  in  his  faith  in  the 
reality  of  the  universe  and  the  dignity  and  worth  of 
life  in  its  completeness. 

Socrates  was  at  ease  and  could  play  at  times  iron- 
ically with  matters  of  apparently  deepest  moment, 
because,  beyond  all  local  and  racial  beliefs,  he  had  the 
resource  of  a  fundamental  faith.  Carlyle,  whose 
humour  and  imagination  so  constantly  acted  and  re- 
acted upon  each  other,  made  traditions  and  conven- 
tions pitiful  or  absurd,  by  evoking  that  background  of 
infinity  and  eternity  against  which  all  human  life  is  set. 
Shakespeare's  tragic  power  is  found,  in  the  last  analysis, 
to  be  one  with  his  comic  power ;  both  flow  from  his 
nature  and  his  view  of  life.  He  deals  with  the  tragic 
.forces  as  one  who  is  superior  to  them;  for  they  are, 
in  fact,  inimical  only  to  those  who  offend  against  the 
laws  whose  servants  they  are.  He  describes  their 
operation,  and  records  their  appalling  results  with  no 
lack  of  that  fundamental  seriousness  which  is  the  mood 
of  every  profound  nature,  but  with  the  calmness  and 
quietude  of  soul  that  come  from  the  ability  to  look 
beyond  the  passing  blackness  and  fury  of  the  storm 
into  the  heavens  which  they  obscure  for  the  moment, 
only  to  make  their  serenity  and  purity  the  more  ap- 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  217 

parent.  Speaking  reverently,  there  is  something  of  the 
divine  repose  in  the  greatest  humour,  —  the  repose 
which  comes  from  a  vision  of  the  totality  of  things. 

Humour  in  this  elemental  sense  is  the  perception 
of  those  contrasts  and  incongruities  which  are  a  part 
of  the  very  texture  of  human  life.  From  the  stand- 
point of  a  formally  logical  view  of  life  this  contrast  is 
pathetic  and  even  tragic ;  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
large,  free  interpretation  of  faith,  through  the  imagina- 
tion, this  contrast  is  full  of  humour.  From  the  divine 
point  of  view,  there  is  the  same  element  of  humour 
in  human  life  which  the  mature  mind  finds  in  those 
experiences  of  childhood  which  are  painful,  be- 
cause they  arise  from  ignorance  of  the  relative  dura- 
tion and  importance  of  things.  There  is,  as  an  acute 
thinker  has  pointed  out,  something  fundamentally 
humorous  in  the  very  conditions  of  human  life ; 
in  the  spectacle  of  immortal  souls  becoming  mer- 
chants and  trafficking  in  all  manner  of  perishable 
wares,  and  of  these  same  imperishable  souls  spending 
energy  and  heart  in  a.  struggle  to  feed  and  clothe  a 
body  which  is  but  the  shell  of  the  spirit.  Humour 
has  its  source  in  this  fundamental  contrast  between 
the  human  soul,  with  its  far-reaching  relations  and  its 
immortality,  and  the  conditions  of  its  mortal  life. 
This  elemental  humour  has  had  no  more  striking  ex- 
pression of  late  years  than  in  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  —  a 
work  of  genius  conceived  in  the  deepest  spirit  of 
humour,  and  finding  its  theme  in  the  contrast  be- 
tween a  spirit  and  the  clothes  which  it  wears.     "  To 


2l8       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

the  eye  of  vulgar  Logic,"  says  Teufelsdrockh,  "  what 
is  man?  An  omnivorous  Biped  that  wears  Breeches. 
To  the  eye  of  Pure  Reason  what  is  he  ?  A  Soul,  a 
Spirit,  and  divine  Apparition.  Round  his  mysterious 
Me,  there  lies,  under  all  those  wool-rags,  a  Garm  ent 
of  Flesh  (or  of  Senses)  contextured  in  the  Loom  of 
Heaven;  whereby  he  is  revealed  to  his  like,  and 
dwells  with  them  in  Union  and  Division ;  and  sees 
and  fashions  for  himself  a  Universe,  with  azure  Starry 
Spaces,  and  long  Thousands  of  Years.  Deep-hidden 
is  he  under  that  strange  Garment ;  amid  Sounds  and 
Colours  and  Forms,  as  it  were,  swathed-in  and  inex- 
tricably over-shrouded :  yet  it  is  sky-woven,  and 
worthy  of  a  God.  Stands  he  not  thereby  in  the  centre 
of  Immensities,  in  the  conflux  of  Eternities?" 

This  contrast  between  the  Finite  and  the  Infinite 
is  the  source  of  the  deep  and  sane  humour  which  is 
shared  by  all  the  creative  minds.  For  it  is  signifi- 
cant that,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Dante,  all 
the  greatest  men  have  been  richly  endowed  with  this 
quality,  and  the  Italians  claim  it  for  Dante.  If  life 
is  long  enough  and  comprehensive  enough  to  provide 
for  the  final  reconcilement  of  apparent  contradic- 
tions, and  the  final  adjustment  of  all  just  claims  for 
opportunity  and  happiness,  then  humour  becomes 
a  prophecy  of  the  joyful  outcome  of  all  struggles 
and  incongruities,  and  of  the  final  resolution  of  all 
discords  into  harmony.  In  natures  of  the  widest 
range,  this  fundamental  faith  seems  to  be  implicit  in 
the  consciousness;    it   lies   below  all  thinking,  and 


A    WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  219 

gives  it  ease,  freedom,  and  the  sportiveness  of  child- 
hood, which  plays  serenely  in  the  presence  of  the 
sublimest  forces,  not  through  insensibility,  but  through 
confidence  in  the  benignity  of  the  universal  order. 
The  narrower,  severer  minds,  like  Calvin,  —  following 
rigidly  logical  processes,  and  shutting  a  large  part 
of  life  out  of  the  field  of  vision,  —  are  not  only 
partial  and  inadequate  interpreters  of  life,  but  seem 
to  be  always  desperately  contending  against  atheism ; 
the  large,  sunny,  poetic  natures,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  such  rootage  in  essential  faith  that,  without  loss 
of  moral  earnestness,  they  can  deal  with  the  contrasts 
of  human  history  in  the  free,  confident  spirit  of 
humour.  If  the  mistake  which  the  boy  makes  in  his 
Latin  grammar  involves  permanent  ignorance,  there 
is  an  element  of  sadness  in  it ;  but  if  it  is  to  be  suc- 
ceeded ultimately  by  mastery  of  the  subject,  it  is 
humorous,  and  we  smile  at  it.  If  the  grief  at  some 
small  loss  is  as  final  and  lasting  as  it  appears  to  a 
child,  it  is  sad  enough ;  but  if  it  is  soon  to  be  for- 
gotten, if,  later,  a  fuller  knowledge  is  to  reveal  an 
exaggeration  of  emotion,  then  the  exaggeration  be- 
comes humorous,  and  we  smile  at  the  recollection. 
If  life  be  as  great  as  our  highest  hopes,  many 
of  our  present  sorrows  must  have  this  ignorance 
of  relative  importance  in  them ;  however  real  and 
painful  they  are,  they  must  present  to  an  intelligence 
higher  than  ours  an  element  of  exaggeration.  If  the 
contrast  between  Finite  and  the  Infinite,  between 
Real  and  the  Ideal,  is  permanent,  then  the  life  of  men 


220       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

is  the  saddest,  hardest,  and  most  bitter  existence 
imaginable.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  these  contrasts 
are  the  contrasts  between  different  stages  of  a  suc- 
cessful development ;  if  contradiction,  incongruity,  and 
imperfection  are  passing  phases  in  a  progression  to- 
ward final  harmony,  —  then  the  life  of  man  permits  of 
the  freedom,  the  delight,  the  confidence,  of  secure 
and  happy  childhood.  The  sanest  souls  instinctively 
believe  their  noblest  conception  of  the  range  and  sig- 
nificance of  life  ;  and  because  they  believe,  humour 
springs  up  like  a  fountain  of  joy  in  them.  And  so 
humour  of  the  highest  kind  becomes  the  truest  evi- 
dence of  that  fundamental  faith  which  lays  its  foun- 
dations deeper  than  all  systems  of  dogma.  The 
humorists  are  always  struggling  for  a  broader  world, 
because  they  believe  that  such  a  world  exists. 

The  part  which  humour  plays  as  a  refuge  from 
crushing  care  and  calamity,  a  resource  under  the  pres- 
sure of  responsibilities  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  is  not 
clearly  recognized  save  by  the  few  who  have  given 
thought  to  the  subject.  There  is  a  general  impression 
that  humour  involves  levity,  and  that  the  man  who  per- 
mits it  to  play  for  a  moment  in  the  clouds  which 
overshadow  him  is  lacking  in  seriousness  of  nature,  or 
is  oblivious  of  the  deeper  aspects  of  his  surroundings. 
This  impression  is  the  very  reverse  of  the  truth ;  for 
humour  of  the  highest  quality  is  never  far  from  sadness, 
and  is  always  allied  with  fundamental  gravity  of  char- 
acter.    Humour  is  not  the  resource  of  men  of  levity 


A   WORD  ABOUT  HUMOUR.  22  r 

and  superficial  views  of  life  ;  it  is  the  resource  of  men 
in  whose  temperaments  the  tragical  note  is  dominant, 
and  who  feel  too  keenly  the  pressure  of  the  tragic 
element.  Edwin  Booth  writes  of  his  father :  "  For  a 
like  reason  would  my  father  open,  so  to  speak,  the 
safety-valve  of  levity  in  some  of  his  most  impassioned 
moments.  At  the  instant  of  intense  emotion,  when  the 
spectators  were  enthralled  by  his  magnetic  influence, 
the  tragedian's  overwrought  brain  would  take  refuge  from 
its  own  threatening  storm  beneath  the  jester's  hood,  and, 
while  turned  from  the  audience,  he  would  whisper  some 
silliness,  or  'make  a  face.'  When  he  left  the  stage, 
however,  no  allusion  to  such  seeming  frivolity  was  per- 
mitted. His  fellow-actors  who  perceived  these  trivi- 
alities ignorantly  attributed  his  conduct  at  such  times 
to  lack  of  feeling ;  whereas  it  was  extreme  excess  of 
feeling  which  thus  forced  his  brain  back  from  the 
very  verge  of  madness." 

The  name  of  Booth  suggests  another  name  which 
has  become  synonymous  with  both  tragedy  and  humour. 
There  were  many  to  whom  Mr.  Lincoln's  humour,  in 
those  terrible  years  of  strain  and  struggle,  seemed  not 
only  a  violation  of  good  taste,  but  a  kind  of  irreverence. 
They  did  not  recognize  the  pathos  of  that  lonely  and 
over-burdened  life,  the  sadness  of  that  great  and  soli- 
tary nature.  Humour  was  something  more  than  a 
resource  to  Mr.  Lincoln ;  it  was  the  safeguard  of  sanity. 
It  was  the  relaxation  of  the  tension  of  mind  which 
made  the  preservation  of  the  mental  equilibrium  pos- 


222       ESSAYS  IN  LITERARY  INTERPRETATION. 

sible  ;  it  was  the  momentary  play  of  the  heart  breaking 
away  from  the  appalling  problems  with  which  the  in- 
tellect was  constantly  dealing,  and  from  which,  for 
long  intervals  of  time,  there  seemed  no  escape.  It 
was  the  sudden  reassurance  of  the  spirit  almost  over- 
borne by  the  responsibilities  which  rested  upon  it; 
the  swift  flight  of  the  soul  out  of  the  storm  into  the 
serenity  beyond  the  circle  of  its  ravages.  There  was 
fundamental  faith  in  it. 


THE    END. 


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